Museum of antiquities
Getting a home phone installed was such a big event, I can still recall my childhood number from the late 1970s, yet can’t remember the new banking pin code I created yesterday.
Our article No 23 Home Telephone (March 17), jogged some old memories for reader June Richards.
“We got our first phone installed in 1974,” she writes. “My mother would sit looking at it waiting for it to ring which, of course, it wouldn’t because nobody had our number, and most friends didn’t have a phone.”
Ever hopeful, June’s mum put a box next to the phone for coins if anybody used it. “Obviously we never did,” confesses June, who, along with her teenage mates, had worked out how to get free calls. “We used to tap the phone in the telephone box down the road – we didn’t realise it was illegal.”
You couldn’t do that now since most old red kiosks have been repurposed. Tony Martin in Peterborough, Cambs, sent this photo of his cousin at her local library after reading
No 29 Red Phone Kiosks (April 1).
He says, “Christine lives in Langford in the Cotswolds, where the villagers have turned this disused box into a book swap library. It’s very popular apparently.”
After catching No 25 Hoovermatic Twin Tub (March 21), Ian Meyrick of Chepstow, Monmouthshire, says. “I was newly married and working in a coal mine in South Africa in 1976 and bought one secondhand for £6.”
After a couple of years the pump failed, and Ian replaced it with one from an underground tractor.
“Then the wheel castors collapsed and I made new ones from phosphor bronze. When the motor failed I replaced it with a massive three horsepower one, and I made new drive pulleys and upgraded the vee belts, replaced the water pipes with high pressure hydraulic pipes, then sanded down and resprayed the casing.”
At this point Ian’s wife used to try and break it so that they would be forced to buy a new one, but he’d made it unbreakable!
“We had it for 30 years before we came back to the UK, and I gave it still working perfectly to one of my staff.”
■ Suggest long-gone items to siobhan. mcnally@mirror.co.uk