Vanishing Phone and Post Boxes – Vanishing Heritage

There are absolutely loads of things I love about the modern age, the computer for instance has changed my life by opening me up to a new life of information and learning etc., but there are many things which seem to be paying the cost for faster ways, easier ways and so on, no more so than some of our institutional landmarks and icons

Slowly but surely we seem to be losing our telephone boxes. Sure I can see they are ‘high maintenance’ in this day of cutting costs for people to do it, the new found concept that many places and items shouldn’t have doors and the safety risks etc. but surely the old Red Phone phone box is what conquers up a picture and example of Great Britain?

Luckily, some Villages and towns are fighting back on this one and by often promising to maintain them themselves, they are keeping them, but the others are gathering dust in Reclamation Yards around the Country waiting for the right person to come along, do them up and use them as a Garden Ornament or other.
Indeed, there’s the examples of a 73 year old man who restored one and made it into an outdoor toilet and the Village which turned theirs into a Library, small, but what a splendid idea!

Then we move onto the iconic red Post Boxes, once along with the Phone Box, was part of the typical English Village Postcard and portraying our past as a community made up of the Railway Station, Post Office, Pub, Village Shop etc.
Many of these are now being removed and replaced with a rented hole in the wall. Maybe the ‘health and safety’ thing comes into it again. Will someone walk into it, will someone think it’s an Alien and so on. The answer though probably lays in manitenance costs once again.

Alongside that is out good old Postman. Luckily, but only at present, they are holding their own. The chap above delivers on an Electric Bike rather than the old single geared job, but I don’t mind that, seems sensible, way to go and it’s environmentally friendly as well.
But the fear is how soon someone will put ‘New Corperate Image’ above everything else and our heritage? More and more Privatisation creeps accross our County Walls.

How long will our ‘red goods’ remain, we’ve lost the old railway colours we knew and loved – red seems to change to everything but ‘green’!

Finally, there’s our Public Houses. Sure I can see the health implications of not having epople with those bad for you things with smoke coming out the end, but it is certainly polishing off our heritage of the Village and Town Pub very quickly.

Slowly they are becoming Restaurants which can only afford to stay open for another two years and some are just a pile of rubble on the side of our road.

We have Ministers and Councils which are supposed to be dealing with our Heritage. Sometimes I wonder what they’re doing between Nine and Five every day !