Pre-Mobile [The Booths]

 

All Images: West Leicester & Clifton, Bristol, August 2024

I have always experienced a certain trepidation about using telephones. Like other kinds of social awkwardness, this was a distinct impediment in my youth, but something I have learned to manage far more effectively in adulthood. Nevertheless, even now, I will still sometimes avoid a phone conversation if there is a viable alternative, or unless a practical imperative pleasurable or pleasurable social interaction are indicated. 

I doubt I am the only one to have experienced such alienation. Our culture is full of references to troubling or confusing telephonic interactions (although they are certainly reported far less often anecdotally). A pretty extreme cinematic example is Joel Schumacher’s 2002 psychological thriller, ‘Phonebooth’ [1.], in which Colin Farrell’s lead character answers a random, unexpected call to a public phone - only to become pinned-down in the kiosk by an unseen sniper. For most of the film, it becomes the highly constricted arena in which he must make potentially life-changing/ending decisions and face-up to his own moral shortcomings. 

Idea for a possible survey:

Which form of phone-call would you least welcome - 

1. One in which a stranger imparts unexpected/disturbing information?
2. One in which no one speaks (possibly enhanced by static, breathing, etc.)?
3. One in in which a public phone begins to ring inexplicably and you are immediately posed the dilemma - to pick-up or ignore?

N.B: Any of these examples might constitute pivotal points in a narrative, or portals to alternative realities (looked-for or otherwise).

Some of my earliest memories involve entering a traditional, red GPO phone box with my mother, at the age of three or four. For somewhat anomalous reasons, the city we lived in also had cream-painted, privately-run boxes, but we were generally GPO customers. It’s possible there were calls to various people, but the ones I remember are those to my Grandmother, who lived on the opposite bank of the adjacent estuary (private line into our own home didn’t come until we ourselves relocated to the southern shore, a couple of years later). There are relatively few intervening miles involved, but in memory, the special journey to the kiosk, and the electronic distancing effect of the apparatus - with its associated infrastructure of cables and exchanges, gave the impression of contacting a foreign country. A trip to visit in person (pre-bridge) involved two train rides and a short paddle-steamer voyage, which only magnified that effect.

The Proustian potential of smell is well documented, and those old multi-windowed cast-iron booths had a particular aroma which remains vivid in the memory. Reason suggests it was essentially a blend of painted cast iron, residual cigarette smoke, and a hint of urine, perhaps - but even now I would simply identify it as that old telephone box smell. Almost as strong are the lasting impressions of filmed and scratched glass - distorting the street outside as I pressed my nose to each individual pane, or the heavily enamelled texture of the iron glazing bars beneath my fingers. Roughly level with the top of my head was a brushed-steel shelf (amazingly, now) - complete with an extensively-thumbed phonebook. My mother would lift me up there, with a coin or two pressed into my hand. Their insertion into the specified slot was a critically-timed procedure - performed exactly as she heard my Grandmother pick-up at the other end, but for me the real satisfaction lay in the sudden release and satisfying metallic clink as each coin dropped into the coin chamber. I might then leaf through the directory pages (futilely searching for some break in the dense and interminable list) as I waited for the handset to be handed over and my Grandmother’s strangely altered voice greeting me from the other side of the world.

Some years later, having left home, I moved between a succession of shared student houses. In very few cases were we prepared to split a phone bill (even if our irregular  comings and goings would have made it feasible). Once more, I found myself in public call boxes whenever it was necessary to make a call. If possible, I would often choose pen and paper instead. For a period, I became a prolific, and typically prolix letter-writer. 

On one occasion I visited the call box at the other end of our street, to make a fairly lengthy call. It was the end of the day, I was weary, and only when I got home did I realise I had foolishly left the kit bag I’d been carrying on the shelf where I once sat as a child (the accompanying directories being long-lost by then). Having only recently relocated to that address, I had stored all my personal documents in the same bag for safekeeping (passport, birth certificate, medical documents, etc., etc.) - but neglected to remove them before going out for the day. Its perceived value instantly multiplied way beyond the meagre cost of simply replacing a cheap canvas bag. It took no more than 5 minutes to run back to the phone booth, but in the interim the bag had been filched. Back then, restoring key official documents could involve an extended bureaucratic ordeal (involving a series of further phone-calls and letters, ironically). For several weeks, it felt like the monster had effectively swallowed my life.

Of course, technological ‘progress’ has long-since rendered the boxes all-but obsolete. Whilst I may be an habitual late-adopter, I’m not a total Luddite, and so I too carry a mobile device - just like (nearly) everyone else. If I’m honest, the range of typed/deferred  alternatives to spoken calls, and obvious flexibility it offers, actually suit me fine. However, any vestigial anxiety about phone calls is now replaced with the periodic stress of negotiating a new deal, and  the life-sapping chores of managing emails, social-media posts, updates etc. Communication over distance never really gets simpler, it seems. It may have become less of a deliberate or pre-planned operation, but the potential filters between us still morph and multiply, nonetheless.

The old cast-iron kiosks slowly retreated into that quaint dimension of British ‘heritage’ that  also encompasses Morris Minors (my family also drove those), welcoming pubs, and properly-funded public services. Most were gradually replaced by a more minimalist, glass-sided variant, adorned by an ever-changing succession of privatised company logos. Somehow, those always felt pretty shonky, despite their somewhat belated nod to functional Modernism. Sleek aesthetics and an ever-contracting societal regard for shared facilities are rarely a great fit, and so it became increasingly rare to find one in a pristine, un-vandalised or otherwise unadorned state. Their bland, flat sides proved impossible for corporate interests to overlook as potential advertising space, and fly-posters-by-night and graffiti enthusiasts clearly felt the same way.

Luckily, all that patina, entropy, entangled messaging, and creeping neglect remain visual meat and drink for my own lens (for the time being, at least). Indeed, even complete absence itself can often supply viable subject-matter, I find. Certainly, the pit-falls of nostalgia are far more usefully swapped-out for an appreciation of the inevitable processes of urban/social change. Either way, the ever-accelerating decline of/demand for the booths, and apparent reluctance of BT to maintain those that do linger, suggest they will probably become just another ghost of the Everyday before long - perhaps revealed in the form of a occasional wrecked carcass, or vacant concrete pad.

[1.]:  Joel Shumacher (Dir.), 'Phone Booth', Fox 2000 Pictures & Zucker/Netter Productions, 2002