Wherever you are in the world, the chances are that you will be able to identify certain uniquely British things.

Just as the New York yellow cab is recognisable to people around the globe, so too is a British red telephone box.

But just as some of us who grew up watching American TV series on television were immediately disappointed when landing in New York to learn that all yellow cabs didn’t look like this…

or this…

…many people from around the globe will land in London and be equally peeved, particularly sci-fi fans of ‘Dr Who’, that police call boxes are almost extinct…

…and that the iconic red telephone box, symbolic of Britain almost as much as John, Paul, George and Ringo, are only marginally less extinct.

I grew up in London, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen a row of four, like this, for 25 years as mobile telephony (cellphone or handy, if you’re in the US or Germany). No one really needs to make many telephone calls from public call boxes anymore as everyone has a phone in their pocket or handbag.

I teleported into a London sim and two steps away from the TP point there was…

Yep. It doesn’t matter where you’re from in the world, London, England or Britain are red telephone boxes. Well…maybe there’s this too…

 

The photoshoot to ‘Abbey Road’, if you were to widen out that photo, or view it from a different angle at the time it was taken, or even now, you’d have seen the Belisha beacons that illuminated every British zebra crossing.

I mention this because SLN headquarters has, in the past, had Belisha beacons on site as a little nod towards it being ‘a little bit of Britain’. As of today, it appears to have both Belisha beacons and a red telephone box to symbolise its landlord’s Brit origins.

The demise of the telephone box also diminishes naturist ‘larking about’ opportunities.

Ella