21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (11 page)

There are, of course, still telephone boxes around, but nowhere near as many as there used to be. And for good reason – no one uses them any more.

A recent survey revealed that only 3% of British adults had used a payphone in the past month. Statistics from Wales (hey, I take whatever I can get when it comes to stats) show that a quarter of phone boxes in the country made, on average, fewer than one call a month.

The reason for this is both obvious and understandable: 90% of adults own mobile phones. Mobile tariffs have become cheaper, with most people paying a certain amount a month to cover a bundle of calls and texts, and there just isn’t the need to nip to a phone box any more.

So who is using them?

Well, the 10% of adults who do not own a mobile are certainly high on the list. As are foreign workers calling home. International calls on mobiles are still prohibitively expensive, so many of the migrant workers living in the UK find it cheaper to call from a phone box.

There is also the element of privacy. If you are lucky enough to find a classic red phone box, then you will be locked within a soundproof booth of cast iron, and passers-by will struggle to hear a word you say. For this reason they remain popular with individuals of a less savoury nature who ‘need to speak to a man about a dog’, or something like that.

But phone box use is plummeting, and long gone are the days when, and some of you will remember that this did actually happen, there would be a queue outside the local public telephone, with some old bloke getting impatient with the teenager calling his girlfriend from inside and taking ages to say goodbye. Older readers will also remember the days when the phones accepted 2p, a couple of which would more than cover the cost of your call. Minimum charge is 60p nowadays. Last time I used one, it was 20p.

When most of us think of a telephone box, an image of the classic red kiosk will come to mind. The first of these was designed in 1924 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in response to a competition. The City of London was not keen on the concrete booths that had starting popping up around the country, and wanted something more stylish and, well, London-y. Scott’s design beat two others and became known as K2 (Kiosk 2), quickly replacing the K1, although the box that appeared on the streets was not quite as the designer expected. He had specified a steel construction with silver paint and a blue/green interior, the final kiosk was, as we know now, made of cast iron and painted a bright red.

There were many incarnations of this original design, with the K6 being the one that was used most widely outside of London, and being the version that most readers will remember calling their boyfriends or girlfriends from, or phoning a cab from while pissed, or having a sneaky wee in … while pissed.

Since the late ’80s, and the privatisation of telecommunications, the red phone boxes have been superseded by the rather dull metal and glass structures and also open booths. For a while, companies other than BT started putting boxes up, but they didn’t last long. Now even these more modern versions are on the downturn; between 2005 and 2008 total phone box usage halved. It is probably fair to speculate that it has at least halved again since then.

As it costs £700 a year to maintain a single telephone kiosk, it is understandable that their numbers are dwindling, and it is to the credit of BT that they haven’t scrapped them completely, recognising that they have to cater to the minority of people who still use them and acknowledging their social importance.

But that hasn’t stopped them from decommissioning loads of old boxes and flogging many of them off for private use. Local communities have taken over the running of some kiosks and there are old red phone boxes in use today as libraries, grocery stores, tourist information booths and, in one case, to store a defibrillator.

With two-thirds of all telephone boxes making a loss, it is inevitable that their number will decline further, but over 2,000 have been given listed status so we should still see them around for some time to come.

Dodo Rating:

Rag and Bone Men

You could consider them the first generation of recyclers. Men with a horse and cart would drive around the neighbourhood at slow speed, shouting, ‘Rag and bone!’ or some such cry, in an attempt to lure housewives out of their homes carrying unwanted scrap.

In the early days of the trade they really did collect rags and bones – the bones were sold to make bone china and the rags for paper – but in the latter half of the 20th century they came to collect any scrap metal or other items that they could sell on. They would often pay cash for items, only a few pence here and there, or offered exchanges, such as donkey stones, as they were called, for whitening doorsteps, but many people were happy using them as a way to clear out old junk that the binmen refused to take.

As the century drew to a close, households had become more focused on recycling, and most people had transport to take their scrap to local dumps and refuse centres. As a result, the trade has almost died out. But not quite. There are a few rag and bone men about, mostly still using a horse and cart (the slow progress they make gives people time to gather up items and take them outside).However, I suspect we will have seen the last of them in a few years’ time.

Dodo Rating:

Cars

Not all cars, obviously. Our roads are full of them, I know that. No, this entry is to mark the passing of the many makes of car that used to be everywhere on our roads, were often hugely popular, but which have ceased production and are gradually vanishing from the streets.

Take, for example, the Ford Sierra. It was one of the top ten most popular cars ever sold in Britain, with over 1.2 million machines on the roads, and ceased production in 1993. Almost anyone over the age of 35 could identify one immediately, but someone under 30 might struggle.

So here we commemorate some of the hugely popular motor vehicles, many of which we will have been driven in when we were younger, that have been parked in the scrapyard of history. See how many of them you can remember, and ask yourself when you last saw one on the open road.

Ford Anglia (1939–1967)

Citroen 2CV (1948–1990)

Morris Minor (1948–1971)

Ford Zephyr (1950–1972)

Triumph Herald (1959–1971)

Ford Cortina (1962–1982)

Hillman Imp (1963–1976)

Vauxhall Viva (1963–1979)

Datsun Sunny (1966–2004)

Ford Escort (1968–2003)

Ford Capri (1969–1986)

Morris Marina (1971–1980)

Ford Granada (1972–1994)

Austin Allegro (1973–1983)

Reliant Robin (1973–2002)

Toyota Starlet (1973–1999)

Vauxhall Cavalier (1975–1995)

Mini Metro (1980–1997)

Ford Sierra (1982–1993)

Austin Maestro (1983–1994)

Austin Montego (1984–1994)

Dodo Rating:

Slam Door Trains

Allow me to set the scene.

My secondary school let pupils out at 3.30pm.

The train station was a three-minute walk away. Two minutes if you ran.

The train left the station at 3.32pm.

The moments after the home bell rang were, as you can probably imagine, utter chaos.

Dozens of scruffy boys, ties flailing in the wind, pegging it down the street in an attempt to catch the early train home. If you missed it, then you had to wait half an hour for the next one. Half an hour to a 12-year-old-boy is a lifetime, especially when he could be at home playing on his Vic 20.

With modern trains, we would have stood no chance. Pushbutton, centrally controlled electronic doors closing 30 seconds before departure would have kept us at bay.

But we didn’t have modern trains back then (this was the early ’80s). Instead, we had the slam door trains, carriages with individual doors, each with a handle you turned to open. The point being that they could be opened at any point during the journey, not just at the station.

So what happened was this – the faster runners would sprint ahead and make it to the station just as the train was pulling in. They would get on the train in normal fashion but leave the doors open.

The reasonably fit but not particularly sporty boys (which included me) would follow in their wake, making it into the station just as the train was supposed to leave. We’d usually be able to jump on at the open doors just as the guard was shouting at us to close them.

Then came the fun bit.

The weak, infirm, lovers of chocolate bars, lazy, and poorly shod would stagger to the station, out of breath and sweating, just as the train was leaving. The carriages were in motion, the train was on its way, the guard had shut his door and was busy lighting his fag for a quick puff before the next stop.