Driver Jatt

Phonebox Library

Up and down the country you’ll spot these phone boxes in many a quaint village. There won’t be a phone in there though.

They’ll be full of books!

Books that the locals (or anyone passing by) has placed in there for you to read. Generally, if you take one you should leave on there. That’s generally good gracious British manners.

I’ve never come across this in the City though. I doubt it’d last. Someone would take all the books, another would be sick in there and eventually some feral youth would vandalise it because… you know (they are hard!).

So how did this come about.

Well, I have spoken to an oldie at one of these boxes and they filled me in. As landlines declined in popularity (and use) maintaining and upgrading the phone boxes turned out to be a rather expensive and annoying affair for our guys at British Telecom.

So what happened next? In 2008 clever people at BT came up with an idea. The ‘Adopt a Koist’ program. That meant local communities, parish councils and charities could adopt a phonebox for just £1. Bargain!

Before I forget some have been used to house defibrillators too (them heart electric shock machines that paramedics use on that old TV program ‘Casualty’.

Next thing you know we’ve got these free libraries. Sometimes they’ll have toys and a noticeboard for local stuff going on too. So far over 1500 have been adopted. Although in the 90’s we had over 100000 of them dotted around the country so in the grand scheme of things there aren’t many that have been adopted but look at it from a different angle. We have over 1500 free local libraries doted around small communities up and down the country. HOWEVER, only around 11000 of these phone boxes were the traditional red phone boxes.

For clarity I shall admit that I have on occasion kept books in the van for the very reason that I may come across one and take a book whilst leaving one of my own unwanted books. About dinosaurs!

Keep a lookout.