Boxes of Delight

Red telephone boxes are as much a part of the national landscape, mental and physical, as power pylons or steeples, or at least they used to be.  They used to be a ubiquitous and pleasing feature of cities, towns, villages, hamlets, crossroads and random stretches of ‘road’ in places so rural you’d wonder that Christianity had reached that far, never mind telephony.

Originating in an age when it was far from the norm to have a telephone in the home unless your surname was ‘Bell’, or you were a character in a costume drama, the original function of these architectural and technological delights was to allow people to telephone other people.  But barely had the bright red paint dried before the role of these local landmarks evolved.

The first step in the evolution of the telephone box was its emergence as a dramatic character.  A person goes into a telephone box and rings another person.  So far, so normal.  But an empty telephone box with a ringing ‘phone?  That’s the start of the sort of plot only rivalled by somebody stepping off on to a deserted railway platform to be informed by a ‘suitably’ ‘characterful’ ‘station master’ that no train has stopped here for twenty years.

As more and more homes got more and more ‘phones, the telephone box moved from being the place you went to to make a telephone call to being the place that you went to to make a private telephone call (you could tell an adulterer in times past because they always had lots of loose change), ironic considering that they were constructed out of steel…and glass, and illuminated. 

As technology advanced, telephone boxes took on roles unconnected with calls, booty or otherwise.  The normal place for displaying business cards is, of course, the newsagents’ window, but thanks to the advancement in printing technology and in particular to business card printing machines being made available in service stations and other haunts of lorry drivers and travelling salesmen, and hence by extension to their service sector, prozzers were able to create professional looking business cards cheaply and in volume, and distribute them around telephone boxes.  Telephone boxes took on something of a festive atmosphere, if your idea of festive is a business-card blizzard of smutty invitations, as the interiors of telephone boxes began to look a little like top shelves, festooned with graphic graphics.  Accordingly, a trip to a red call box could resemble a visit to a red light district.

These temples of communication also provided other sorts of relief in times of extremis.  Many a chap, decent chaps, honest chaps, the sort of chap who would shudder to relieve themselves against a tree, well, an oak, well, a listed oak, would of an evening be profoundly glad to happen across a telephone box to answer not a ringing handset but the call of nature.

There was, of course, a protocol to be observed in such cases.  Firstly, one always avoided any tramp that might have taken up residence overnight in a traditional telephone box.  (BT (Bastard Telecom) modified the design of telephone boxes in the 80s, changing them into telephone ‘kiosks’ in a move which perfectly encapsulated a shift from a public service GPO monument to humanity that would serve not only as a tool of communication but shelter from the storm, to a profit-driven monster, putting into service a plexiglazz monstrosity that had a gap all the way around the bottom, presumably to allow the elements to penetrate and so discourage overnight guests.  Or possibly to provide adequate drainage.)  The protocols, famously illustrated by a small sign illustrated by none other than Quinten Blake that used to delight, inform and repulse in equal measure, were that if one was relieving oneself in a telephone box, one always faced away from any observer(s), and always held the handset firmly and confidently gripped in the unemployed hand.  Just a chap, making a call, and if you happen to notice that a chap has his chap (or indeed his penis) in his other hand, then any shocked observer could take comfort in the certainty that urinating is just about the least offensive thing that the occupant of the telephone box can be doing in such a pose.

The telephone box has so often doubled up as a crisis WC that rumour has it that in the days when telephone boxes had telephone directories in them (a forerunner of today’s telephone box libraries, though exclusively stocked with books with lots of characters and not much plot), serious thought was given to printing the directories on soft paper, possible perforated.

The rise in the increase of mobile ‘phone ownership coincided with a decline in courtesy to others and of inhibitions about sharing private details with total strangers.  People making a telephone call no longer sought a soundproof booth but instead favoured busy public transport or hitherto quiet and peaceful spots to make their telephone calls.

So it was that the telephone box fell into disuse.

As a telephone box.

They ceased making money because even though nobody was using them, they still had to be cleaned and occasionally de-tramped.  Slowly telephone boxes started to disappear, airbrushed out of the landscape.  (Sadly, not everyone thought to check to see if mobile ‘phone coverage extended to all the sites now marked not with a proud, glittering. Illuminated, slightly pee-smelling red box, but with a square of concrete.)

Of course, if there were any justice in the world, a succession of small plaques would be sunk into the otherwise anonymous concrete squares that, like the footsteps of telephony prehysteria, now dot the land.  A small plaque to commemorate a huge event, for instance that such-and-such a person ‘phoned their mother and father to inform them they had become grandparents from this site in 1965; that Debbi Broke Up With Darren using this ‘phone box in 1984, that in the same year, Darren confirmed to Debbi’s best friend Mandy that Debbi was a right slag anyway, and did Mandy want to go to out with him? And that in 1993, a profoundly relieved Jeff profoundly relieved himself on this very site.

The ‘problem’ with traditional red telephone boxes is that they have more individual panes of glass in them than the average cathedral, and so are devilish hard to clean, even if not be-tramped.  Naturally, as soon as Bloody Terrible stopped cleansing telephone receivers and started cleansing the landscape of character, the nation revolted.  Anyone who produced rural postcards of a sheep standing by a dry stone wall next to a red telephone box realised that sheep and stone alone just don’t do it.  The middle class mobilised.  In 4x4s.

As a result, many villages have successfully held on to their red telephone boxes (usually the same places that have held on to village greens).  Of course, they may not have managed to hold on to their indigenous population or village youth that has been priced out of the place by second home buyers, but at least the centre of the village still has its crimson totem to modernity.

Now though, more than ever, we know that telephone boxes can fulfil duel functions.

Telephone boxes have, famously, become village libraries, a phenomenon that started in 1994 when a lady in Masham left three copies of Catherine Cookson on a shelf by mistake, started a national trend, and has been too embarrassed to ask for them back since.

And there are yet more modern social uses.  Because it’s not just the internet that’s slow in rural areas. Ambulance response times being what they are in the countryside, there’s been a couple of reactions.  The first is a very practical approach to dealing with any accident involving threshing machinery.  Following the screams and panicked shut down, people pack anything still twitching in frozen peas and then hey ho for the nearest hospital.  Everyone then gathers at the local pub to wait for an update on successful re-attachment.  The first time anyone mentions ‘micro-surgery’ it is the law that somebody must say ‘was it his cock that got cut off’?  Followed by ‘I don’t make the rules’.

The second reaction is the most modern incarnation.  Village defibrillator.

On the face of it, this is a great idea.  With more and more people having more and more unrealistic expectations of their ability to do stuff, like running marathons, staying upright on a bar stool or enduring another fucking day on public transport, it’s a wonder that everyone doesn’t carry around their own defibrillator, like an evacuee carrying around a box on a piece of string that he or she imagines contains a gas mask bust in fact only contains an apologetic note from their mum explaining that their mask has in fact been sold for gin.

Defibrillators are appearing in more and more places.  Like pubs.  And surely that can’t be healthy.  Naturally, if a beloved boozer keels over and pegs it half way down a pint of what the landlord laughingly refers to as his best, then this will lead not just to blokes reading about the demise thinking ‘that’s the way to go’, or indeed the regulars all doing the sort of mental calculation that would boggle Turing to determine when would be the decent time to take up residence on Fatty’s recently vacated bar stool.  It leads to a few charity nights and the proud purchase of a defibrillator for the pub.  Of course, it’s only a short jolt to think that once the locals work out that the thing is rechargeable, they can incorporate it into their evening with, in descending order of idiocy, options including: 1) answering pub quiz questions after having paddles applied to both temples and being ‘zapped’, 2) playing ‘how high can you go’ on the voltage charge, noting that some wag has written ‘Frankenstein’ on one of the settings; 3) playing ‘Jason Statham’ by trying to improvise an anti-bad guy weapon and propel other people across the room by paddling their nipples with electricity; 4) playing doctor by bellowing ‘clear’ and then zapping an unsuspecting drinker in the arse and, of course, the winner, 5) the ‘electric boogie’: suck a lime, tequila shot, lick salt off of a live paddle.

But the latest incarnation of the telephone box as a home for the village defibrillator is something else.  Especially when you consider that only people trained in the use of the defibrillator may use it.  That’s probably a good thing, the last thing you need to see is some idiot spitting on some paddles for improved connectivity and electrocuting himself.

However.  Village life is interesting.  It is easy to start an argument (I refuse to use the term feud, we’re not, as Ross Kemp remarked in ‘Ultimate Force’, Americans) in an English village.  Defibrillators are expensive kit, so presumably only accessed by trained community members, these are the people you do not want to piss off, especially if you are lardy.  So.  It’s important to keep those keymasters trained to use the defibrillator and trusted with a key to its cabinet, on side.  The last thing you need to do if you like your beer, fags and lining your arteries with cheese is to forget to return those pinking shears you borrowed off the stuck up bloke who lives in ‘the Old Rectory’ and which you secretly used to trim your toenails.

It’s right that what was once an electronically powered beating heart of the village should once again be an electronically powered beating heart restarter of the village.

As to what’s next for the village telephone box?  It’s either going to be the recharging point, take off and landing pad for the village delivery drone, or home to the village three dee printer that will print your grocery order for you using protein goo and dye.

And, of course, it’s the perfect shape to operate as the village teleport kiosk once that technology is perfected, it’s even got the dial mechanism to enter the co-ordinates.

Business School

Boredom, bullies, balls and buggery. That's the lot of the English schoolboy, if he is fortunate. By fortunate I mean attending a decent public school rather than a state comp. where 'double Greek' refers not to ninety minutes of classics, but rather being rubbed up against, in quite an alarming way, by two big boys in the sports locker.

A private education prepares a chap for deprivation, random cruelty, ritual cruelty, imprisonment and facing crushing defeat at sporting occasions with fortitude. All useful life lessons, especially if one follows the English cricket team.

With the economy in the state it's in (pretty soon the only AAA rating one will see will refer to a type of battery), it's not wholly unreasonable to see private education flourishing, rather than contracting.

Recently it was the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens and the country chose to celebrate by arranging for society to closely reflect the plots and characters of his novels, with an increasing divide between the very rich and the very poor, and lots of grotesque characters established in positions of power. With the Government looking to re-introduce cholera as part of their NHS reforms and welfare reform policies consisting of 'reopen the workhouses' and 'replace the family tax credit with gruel', Dickens would have felt very much at home in twenty first century Britain.

In these desperate economic times, fortune rewards those who can think creatively about how they can earn a living. Certainly, there's currently a vogue for stepping aside as the 4:40 from Preston thunders past and then making off with 200 yards of copper signalling cable, but other career options are available. This is especially true with the Government wanting ordinary members of the public to provide the services that government and councils have hitherto. And while one cannot, it would appear, drive one's own nuclear submarine around the coast, nor just pitch up at your local hospital and announce that even if you are not a qualified brain surgeon, you are a volunteer and that and your keenness and really sharp carpet knife must count for something, it would appear that just about anyone is trusted to run a school.*

If you follow a few simple pointers, you can't go wrong. The first thing to settle on is the location. Ideally this should be in an isolated part of the country. Type 'desolate' into Google maps and you should get some locations. Such an approach will mean that you are likely to be able to pick up an appropriate property (gently decaying stately home being sold by gently decaying fag end of the aristocratic family that have lived there for generations, or a former army camp) at a decent price, that boys will be discouraged from running away from if they have to cross miles of unforgiving, booby-trapped, heathland before reaching civilisation in the form of the local hamlet where they can be immediately apprehended, and of course that any outbreak of child-friendly maladies like mumps, acne or typhoid can be easily contained.

The next thing you have to do is establish a sense of history.

By which I mean fake a sense of history.

Thanks to Wikipedia we now live in an age where rewriting history is no longer the exclusive preserve of victors or those writers who imagine a world where the Parliamentarians won the English Civil War (fact checked on Wikipedia) and one can, from scratch, come up with a glorious or convincingly inglorious past for your place.

You will need some famous old boys. Choose people who are dead or, although famous, are also safely anonymous, like the bloke who invented blu-tak, or did something ghastly to Rommel. Aristocrats from now extinguished lines are also a good bet, but don't use too many as this will give the impression that the local water makes you impotent.

This sense of history extends to the uniform. Do not, whatever you do, incorporate anything that a parent might pick up at any store other than the one you have done a deal with for kickbacks. No to trousers, yes to knickerbockers. No to black blazers, yes to capes. No to caps, yes to modified coal miners' helmets. And a big yes to some sort of ceremonial baton, twelve inches long and made of oak should do. Dressed like that your boys are going to need to be able to protect themselves against perverts and toughs.

You will now need to recruit teachers and this is where the global economic meltdown really comes into play. Foreign academics have seen their salaries and research budgets cut to the point where they are humiliatingly reduced to posting 'make maths fun' videos on YouTube in the hope of selling advertising, writing essays for private school yahoos, or simply running their own crystal meth labs are ripe for recruitment. Recruit broadly, this will ensure you have an attractive mix of foreign accents and also drive your bursar to distraction as he tries to seat the staff at high table in a manner that ensures that no two staff members from countries recently in conflict sit next to one another.

Always make sure your Latin master is a German as they are surpassed in their talent for sadism only by the Welsh.

Make your PE teacher a Welshman.

You are going to need term names, and the more exotic the better. Avoid terms such as 'Witsun', 'Spring' or 'New'. Instead you want a terms like 'Long Minge', 'Conkers' and, in an emergency, anything named after a fishing ground. Ideally, you're aim is to have a child baffle their parents by asking if they are coming to pick him up at the end of 'Dogger'.

Remember as you set the cirriculum that you are preparing people for life. How to dine should be taught, as should proper comportment abroad, on public transport, or upon finding out that one's mistress is pregnant.

And in these troubled times, how better to prepare lads for life than the establishment of a cadet force, not only will this instil a sense of discipline and encourage self and team confidence, but if they show talent, then the is no reason why the senior boys cannot make the school some money during their annual exercises during 'Umbridge Vac' by providing private security in Iraq, or overthrowing a small dictatorship somewhere in Africa.

Despite a secluded location, it's still important that your school develop close links with the community as one wants to develop a sense that your boys are trusted and dependable. Those signs forbidding more than one boy in the shop at a time can be seen as a failure, especially if that shop is a Tesco superstore.

Finally, you need the School Game. Certain schools are famous for inventing games or variations of games. As England are so monumentally crap at so many sports these days you are not expected to set the bar very high, indeed setting the bar a bit high might be the game. As long as it is something dangerous. Essentially, you are looking at something that will cause at least one exploded splidney - a sporting injury so unique that they have to invent a new organ for it - every term, which requires something dangerously violent, ideally with a squash ball and a length of rope stiffened with tar.

* except registered peodos. If you are unregistered, you're fine.

The Beautiful Sentiment

Why support a premiership football team? Certainly, if you like matching decorations then supporting Manchester United is fair enough, as a visit to their shop will outfit you with a themed duvet, lampshade, wallpaper, toothbrush holder and loo roll. The same can be said of Arsenal and Chelsea, with the added benefit that you can complete your collection of footie tat with a tattoo.

If you were born in the area and they are your team then fair enough, but it's something of a mystery why most of Manchester United's supporters don't live in a Manchester post code, they can't all have moved out of Manchester (although having visited Manchester, that's not a bad idea).

Maybe it's to be associated with success. If one had to support one's local team, simply by being in their catchment area, most supporters would spend their weekends shivering in rain-swept provincial footie grounds, risking food poisoning from the catering and trench foot from the stands, instead of watching Premiership football matches from the warm safety of the pub.

Misery. That's the usual reason you stick with a team. You watch one match where they should have won and that they lose and that's it, you've made an emotional investment and the next thing you know you're buying replica kit to wear at 3:00pm on a Saturday.

Which is what, perversely, has drawn me to take an interest in Aston Villa. They have followed the lead of FC Barcalona, who don't have a sponsor's name on their kit but rather sport the word UNICEF to raise awareness of that organisation and have the name of a local children's hospice, Acorns, instead.

This, I think, is tremendous. And imagine the edge it gives you over some tosser with the name of a paint company, arms dealer or airline on his chest.

Kraft Korner

Kraft, the 'food giant', has bought Cadbury, the chocolate company. Any quaint notions you may have of a Willy Wonkaesque set up to make chocolate...is probably not that far off the mark. The Bourneville estate in Birmingham was built by Cadbury in Victorian times so that the workers would have somewhere decent to live. The visionaries at Cadbury realised that rickets-wracked workers consumptively coughing their teeth into the fruit and nut mix was probably A Bad Thing and so built a charming housing estate for them.

I don't know much about Kraft except that they make processed cheese. Processed cheese is one of those stealth phrases that only seems odd when you stop to think about it. What the hell is there to process about cheese? Cheese is, essentially, milk plus time.

OK it's apparent that there's a little more to it than that, and I suppose the magic of processed cheese is getting it to look the same after you peel the cellophane from the slice as it did when it was still in the packaging. Cheese slices (that is, pre-sliced cheese (presumably for people too stupid to be trusted with a knife), individually packaged (presumably for people who are on a mission to convert landfill pits into mountain ranges)) are designed for one purpose only, to go onto the top of a beef patty and make a cheeseburger.

After Kraft bought Cadbury and essentially either sacked all the Umpa Lumpas or sold them into slavery, I won't be buying Cadbury again. Which is a shame, because at Easter, you have your Cadbury cream eggs. At Christmas, you have your Cadbury selection box, with a game on the back and about 7 billion calories in the box itself, best consumed immediately on Christmas morning, giving you the energy to rip off all the wrapping from the presents. And at all times you have a bar of Dairy Milk or Fruit and Nut in the glove box of the car. On the M-Way feeling drowsy? One bar later and you are hard on the bumper of the Porche in front, whooping and honking for him to move over!

So Kraft are, essentially, all about the calories – presumably that’s why they are a ‘food giant’, or at least a food-lard arse. Cadbury are all about love.

Because Cadbury chocolate is love. It's what love tastes like, smooth, creamy and delicious and, just like love, it can lead to funny sensations in the pit of the stomach and induce nausea if abused.

Europeans mock our chocolate. Made with vegetable oil instead of the coca powder it means that Cadbury chocolate is a melt-in-the-mouth luxury sensation, rather than the grudging, bitter excuse for a snack available on the Continent. British chocolate is chocolate for lovers. Foreign chocolate is chocolate for masochists. Aztecs used to use lots of coca in their rituals. A bad bunch who made a habit of gruesome ritual sacrifice, some of this has to be down to eating all that bitter chocolate. If they had access to Dairy Milk they would probably have been a bit more placid. With a diet containing bitter chocolate and coffee, no wonder they were always so bloody bad tempered.