telephone box libraries

sometimes i think we’ve seen too much evil for this world. with every passing week the news at 10.pm seems to get more intense,yet in the midst of all that badness they’ll occasionally throw up a token piece of good news just to add a little bit of sugar to the horror. i was tickled when they featured a clip of a sweet guy washing the windows of his local red telephone box…he was totally out there with the fairy liquid,brushing the floor,then building neat shelves into the booth.who cares what low or high brow books fill those telephone boxes, just only that no pigs vandalise them….the fun chappy said he often wondered what the hell he was doing,knowing full well that any moron could easily turn it all upside down…or equally annoying that the actual government might in time deem these ideas a health/safety hazard…so this dear soul on the news at ten was laying himself wide open for a crushing … and wouldn’t y’know it…

how very very uncool…those ruined books in the mud are like tears from the very telephone box itself, while it cries out in naked embarrassment. the rapists who destroy these boxes won’t even give it a second thought unless they’re rumbled…i looked on the dolly-net and learned how there’d been a few cases of arson on the phone box libraries. it’d be great if one day these killjoys realised the most rebellious expression during these extremely corporate times is to do something beautiful,and to do it for free.a true rebel would leave a little cheap mobile in the booth,and hope for it to remain there incase a phoneless soul needs to make an emergency call.y’know one of the neat things about those telephone box libraries is there’s often comics for youngsters where the parents don’t have any extra hard cash for their kids.

those darling red telephone boxes play into my sense of nostalgia in the same way as a dansette record player..they’re colourful…electrical,and home to ziggy stardust…in my life i’ve watched those living works of art travel through time on their own bumpy journey…in the early 1960’s they were beacons of communication,then in the 70’s on my first trips to london i got my first insight into the world of prostitution from the sexy little cards mysteriously placed inside the booth … apparently steve strange in the throws of heroin addiction used to pin those cards into the telephone boxes around central london to finance his fix…then in the late eighties as the human race got even murkier ,they began smelling of pish,and now in the age of mobile phones they’ve been left adrift like washed up film stars……so when i saw a resourceful chappy on news at ten turning his local one into a mini library,it gave me a warm glow all over.

i made life changing calls from those lovely red boxes…as a teenager in northern ireland i’d sashay out of the caravan i lived alone in to make calls across the irish sea to kick start my life…the last time i used one was in the early nineties,and noticed how sensitive i’d become to urban dirt when having to talk into the rancid receiver,and then only recently i had the brainwave of maybe acquiring one for our back garden , but was shocked at the price they were going for…the round pillar red letterboxes are now fetching eight thousand pounds,while the telephone booths are being exported to hollywood to sit aside swimming pools as funky outdoor shower units! so y’know it’s great that local people can buy their own red telephone box off the government for exactly one english pound to share their joy of books…it’s all too beautiful..libraries in telephones boxes…flippin nora..no one saw that one coming…i love it.

and i send all my loving to you………sweary mary on your telephone line.