Red Telephone Box | The Last Krystallos

I miss red telephone boxes…strange really, as they got me into no end of trouble… The one pictured caused offense when a passing police car noticed I was sitting atop it!
Another crushed my finger.
And do you remember the rush when a public phone box rang? Not just the literal rush of who got there first to answer it, but the feeling of sponteneity and curiosity as to who was on the other end… more often than not a wrong number, but every now and then the caller would be for one of your friends!
I was very disappointed when red boxes got replaced by grey metal ones…no soul. The red British telephone box was, and still is in the odd far flung, long forgotten, rural spot, an icon. Not so now in a world dominated by 21st century mobile phones…How times have changed!
And, ah look, a red pillar box, just behind Dave’s head, we still have them!
It was this phone box, standing innocently in the snow, that claimed my finger, not in its entirety, but crushed it nonetheless…
A happy game of 44 Save All, remember that? and I chose to hide in the phone box…not the best place, I agree, but there I was. All was fine until I decided to come out and was obstructed by two lads, no idea who they were…not our usual group. They pushed on the door and my finger slipped between the door and the hinges…just recall how heavy those old doors were! Amazingly though, the boys let the door go after I deafened them with ear-piercing screams, and after a bus trip to A&E, my finger recovered and is still useful now, though it does crack when I use it!
So I miss the old icons of our childhood…green lampposts, haven’t seen one of them for years, ZX Spectrum games (that take half an hour to load then crash just as you hit the curser keys), half-penny sweets, space-hoppers, home phones with dials, video recorders (that don’t corrupt recordings but do screw up your tapes), Grange Hill, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (before you had to resort to ebay!), Mastermind (the game not the programme, you know, the one where you had to guess the coloured pegs), Kentucky fried Chicken before it became known as KFC…and Red Telephone Boxes…