HAVE YOU noticed how few telephone kiosks there are to be seen nowadays? They are becoming almost as scarce as white blackbirds, writes Frank Kilfeather
No prizes for guessing why they are disappearing so rapidly. Of course, it's thanks to that wonderful invention the mobile phone. Mobiles are all over the place now, like a big rash. You just can't escape them. Every child is born with a mobile phone stitched to its ear. If anything happened that phone they would be thrown into total confusion. The bloody things are now so advanced that they can even talk and take pictures.
Yes, it's called progress and we have moved on.
However, I have a great sentimental attachment to the old telephone kiosks, simply because I spent a large chunk of my working life as a reporter in them, dictating copy to the newsroom.
There were times I thought my life was going to end in a telephone kiosk. I have been roundly abused and practically assaulted on many occasions for hogging the kiosk for too long. I couldn't really blame the long-suffering queue of people outside as I slowly and carefully dictated a few hundred words to the copytakers. That was a soul-destroying exercise that could put years on you. Young journalists today don't know how lucky they are to have not only mobile phones but laptop computers. With the press of a button their copy goes straight down the line. Efficient and safe. What posh, what luxury! If anyone had told me 40 years ago that mobile phones and laptops were going to revolutionise journalism, well, I just wouldn't have believed them. But as it says in the Bible, it came to pass.
In the mid-1960s, when I worked for a Dublin evening newspaper, I seemed to spend my life running in and out of telephone kiosks. I started work each day at about 7.30am and almost immediately could be sent off to different parts of the city chasing fires, road crashes, street disturbances and various other incidents. My pockets would be weighed down with shillings and pennies for the phone. When I had the story I was only half way there. I had to find a phone. I could have the best story in the world, but if I could not get through to the office, I was dead in the water.
So I found a kiosk and my problem was solved? Not on your life, baby. The phone had probably been ripped out and was lying on the floor - the handiwork of some local yob. Or, if he hadn't broken the phone itself, he had jammed the slot for coins. God, the frustration. And there was only half-an-hour left to the city deadline.
Thirty years ago, a spokesman for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs proudly told me they were bringing in a sturdier type of kiosk that would stand up to heavy wear and tear. He warned me not, under any circumstances, to use the expression "vandal-proof". "We don't want to challenge their ingenuity, but these kiosks will be a lot better," he promised. I can't say I noticed a huge difference.
I remember many years ago spending four hours covering a debate in the old Stormont and two hours in a kiosk dictating the story from my shorthand notes. Needless to say, I took some flak from the angry queue outside. Working for a paper of record brings great responsibilities and dangers.
One warm summer night in Derry, the usual game between young nationalists and loyalists - throwing bottles and bricks at each other - was in full swing. I ran off into a side street and found a friendly red telephone kiosk. I was about half-way into my report when the riot came around the corner and the fighting factions hurled their missiles at what had been my safe bunker. In the middle of all this a senior sub-editor came on the line to ask me the name of the street where the riot was taking place. I said it was in the centre of Derry near the square, but he wanted to know the exact name. I told him Derry wasn't New York and I was in fear of my life. He got off the line and I went on to finish my report. The riot moved on down the street. All ended well - and I never heard anything further about the abuse I gave to that sub-editor.
In the early days of the Troubles in the North, I knew a reporter who did not get on too well with his news editor. He used to instruct the receptionist in the hotel that if any calls came from Dublin, "Tell them I've gone out". This worked like a dream and he was never bothered. Quite a gentleman journalist. But I can clearly remember him saying all those years ago: "God, Frank, if they ever invent such a thing as a mobile telephone we'll all be destroyed."