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The Audio Long Read

The last phone boxes: broken glass, cider cans and – amazingly – a dial tone

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Five million payphone calls are still made each year in the UK. Who is making them – and why?. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:11.0

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0:48.0

Welcome to the Guardian Long Reed, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

0:54.0

For the text version of this and all our long-weeds, go to thegardian.com forward slash long-weed.

1:04.0

The Last Phone Boxes. Broken Glass, Cidercans and amazingly, a dial tone by Sophie Elmhurst.

1:13.0

There used to be a phone box at the top of my street. It stood in the middle of a traffic island near a bin, a lamp post and a ballad.

1:23.0

I never questioned the presence of the phone box, just as I never questioned the presence of the bin, the lamp post or the ballad.

1:31.0

Often when we passed, my daughter and I would play the phone box game.

1:36.0

I had to stand to one side and pretend to call the phone in the phone box, which didn't work.

1:41.0

She would then pretend to answer, before making a series of further calls in a complicated unfolding of phone related business that involved making plans, changing plans and then ringing everyone she just spoken to again to tell them she was going to be late.

1:57.0

It was fun this game, and it became hard to pass the phone box without playing it.

2:03.0

The phone box to her was the best kind of toy. It was a real object that no longer worked and therefore had the gravitas of something adults had once used but could now be deployed to her own imaginative ends.

2:18.0

It also had an extra loopy charm. A giant phone housed in its own little shelter outside in the middle of the street made absolutely no sense.

2:30.0

A phone to her was a small, shiny rectangle that lived in my coat pocket.

...

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