HEALTH PLUS:Public phone boxes will soon be a distant memory, writes MARIE MURRAY.
AN END to the public phone box has been declared. Soon they will be no more. They will be systematically removed. Redundant technology: their purpose has ended. They no longer serve a necessary function for a sufficient number of people to make their continuance secure.
And so they go until they become but quaint memories of an older generation regaling their grandchildren with tales of trysts at the local telephone box or romance conducted through whispered confidences in that semi-private box in the middle of the village, or at the end of the road.
Of course telephone boxes will reappear in stories, in the records of a time when communication was less immediate, when the means of communicating were less available and when what was said between people was recorded in their memories rather than digitally.
They will emerge in artistic representations: landmarks of the past relegated to the archives of quaint and curious communication from another time.
But what of their psychological significance rather than their utilitarian worth? What role did they play in the lives of people? What privacy did they afford, away from the home telephone for those lucky enough to have a telephone in the house but unfortunate enough to have no privacy using that instrument at home?
What arrangements were made in the telephone box, what plans plotted, what help provided? What relationships were begun and ended? What words were spoken? What tears were shed? What joy contained?
What stories might those boxes tell if they could recount the emotions of those who occupied them and the details of their lives?
What calls were made there? Applications for jobs. Results of tests. Those looking for accommodation with newspaper in one hand, pen in the other and a stash of money to see if the “bedsit” had gone or could still be viewed.
There were “trunk” calls home from those who had left to find a life in the city. There were calls with good news. Calls with bad news. Calls hiding homesickness. Calls pretending all was fine when it wasn’t and calls to say that the job had been secured, that life was good, when the next visit home would be, the time the train would be in and the hope of being collected from it.
There were calls reversing the charges from teenagers stranded without means of getting a bus or taxi home and needing help. There were calls for doctors and ambulances, frantic calls when a broken phone meant life or death.
There were calls made out of loneliness and despair. There were calls to the Samaritans made by those who needed a warm response and assurance that help was at hand.
Stories were told in those boxes that could not be told elsewhere, that seeped from the soul of the teller into the receiver of the tale.
With the ease and swiftness of communication and messaging it is hard to imagine a time when making a phone call was an event. It required decision and the accumulation of coins, a walk to the designated box and a wait, perhaps outside, before the chance to feed the coins, turn the heavy dial and press the magical button A to connect.
Then there was the hope that the receiver of the call was the person for whom the call was intended lest they waste the precious minutes allocated until the signal that more money was required bleeped out its instance that the time was up.
Each phone box had its own predictable tattered telephone book, with names and numbers underlined or scrawled upon the margins of its pages.
On the surrounding wall was the graffiti of scribbles, love messages and obscenities, sometimes the musings, doodling or despair of those waiting for a call that did not arrive at the designated time or those using the box as shelter from the rain and cold on a winter’s night.
As with all public facilities the challenge for the providers was to secure the service against the ravages of those whose entertainment was to dismantle the wire, break the receiver, remove the book or deface the space beyond acceptable levels of use.
The phone box relied on community, civility, care and sufficient use. By the time it was upgraded with indestructible materials and adapted for modernity, technology brought its demise.
As the emotional landmarks of the past are removed, we would do well to retain the memories they contained. Human communication may advance in means and mode but the content of our lives remains remarkably unchanged and unchangingly remarkable.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray's recent essay collection Living Our Times, published by Gill and Macmillan, is now available in paperback