Travelling in Greece in the summer of 1981 without a mobile, or a credit card

Travelling in Cephalonia

Now I never did Greece in the 70s.

That was when many of my friends travelled the islands.

Back then it was all pretty much an adventure, starting with the night flight to Athens and then in the early morning the taxi to the Piraeus followed by the ferry and a series of island hopping journeys.

But even in the 1980s when I first began going there was still an element of hit and miss.

The roads and the rail network were yet to benefit from EU money and of course many of the places we washed up in were remote and still fairly basic.

Added to this there was our own lack of knowledge and fore thought like the year we booked two islands on either side of the mainland, opted to do our own transfers and discovered both the delights and the nightmare of a ferry from one island to one Greek port followed by a taxi drive across Greece to another port, another ferry and the second island.

Asos

In the meantime we lost our companions who had all the paperwork for our new accommodation and managed to arrive ahead of them at the island with only a vague idea of where the resort was.

Today our friends would be a mobile call away but 25 years ago that little communication revolution had yet to arrive.

And so once again I am reflecting on the extent to which things have changed.  In Asos on Cephalonia there are two telephone kiosks for those who do not want to use a mobile.

They take telephone cards and are quick and efficient, although I have to say at present the one in the village square is broken.

Back in the 1980s everything was different for once you had found the kiosk you might have to wait in line joining a handful of other tourists and locals wanting to phone off the island.

Nor was this restricted to Greece.  Later in the 1990s in Spain you still had to book an international call, wait to be called by the official, and watch as the minutes shot by and hoping that for some vague and unspecified reason the line would not go dead in mid sentence.

The telephone card

And phones are not the only mark of how things have changed.

Back in Asos there is no bank, post office or cash dispenser, but little over 20 minutes away in the port of Fiscardo I counted several holes in the wall and of course in the capital there are plenty.

All of which means the days of travellers cheques are for all but the cautious traveller a thing of the past.

But how different back in the 1970s when an acquaintance  who had been back packing across Crete one summer ran out of money and opted for the simple expedient of staying over on the island and working on a local farm till the following year.

The farmer’s family treated him very much as their own, and thirty years later they still had his photograph on the kitchen wall.  It was faded and he looked a lot younger but it was him framed by an olive tree and a vine.

There is of course a danger at this point of sliding into romantic tosh.  As a parent with children who did their “travelling year” I would have been mortified at such a turn of events.  But then that is what adventures are about and such concerns have to be put into perspective.

The phone in Asos which didn't work

My own uncle was just 19 when he embarked on a journey which took him by wartime convoy from Liverpool to South Africa and through the Suez Canal to the Fall of Greece in 1940 and back via Egypt to Basra and eventually to the Far East.

And in a little less dramatic way when it was my turn to leave home to pursue a degree course in Manchester in the September of 1969, I left London with just a small suitcase travelling alone and arriving at Piccadilly with only a vague idea of where I was going to stay and how to get to the college the following day.

But enough of such hard worn stories, things move on and usually for the better.

Location; Asos

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

101 ways to use a Chorlton telephone box …..the Calypso one

It’s just a sign of the times.

Once no one would presume to post adverts on the side of a telephone kiosk.

Which was partly because the old fashioned red one with all those tiny windows made it difficult.

Leaving the bold entrepreneur to leave his or her business cards discreetly positioned at eye level inside the box.

But not so now.

Location; Manchester Road

Picture, Calypso Kiosk, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 

101 ways to use a Chorlton telephone box …..

Today I am thinking about the revolution in communication which has put a mobile phone into almost everyone’s hand and made the humble telephone box almost a thing of the past.

True they have not yet passed into oblivion, if for no another reason than not everyone has their own personal phone.

But I remember the 1980s when competition between BT and Mercury led to a duplication of telephone boxes where the rival companies plonked the boxes down all over the city often right next to each other.

Added to which BT went on an aggressive programme of installing them in multiple units, sometimes within a short walk.

So, on Beech Road, there were two outside the old post office, another two on the corner of Wilton and a bank of them at the bus terminus.

And now this old form of communication seems to be in retreat.

There are fewer of them, they do not seem to be mended as quickly and many have been given over to other uses, from libraries to shops and museums.

Of course, I know that there were more dubious uses for the boxes, and even before their decline, they were the repository of all sorts of cards from those advertising taxis to those inviting the reader to sign up for other services.

Today many stand forlorn and have become victim to heaps of posters which I suppose makes them still in the business of communication, even if the posters are often quite tatty.

Leaving me just to think back to the time when you could dial a song, reverse the charges or just push button B to get your money back.

And if you were in the know, and had that long series of numbers which were allegedly used by GPO engineers to phone the Exchanges you could make a call for free.

Sadly my innate sense of honesty always stopped me ..... that and a serious mistrust that a] it wouldn't work and b] I might somehow get caught.

Location; Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton

Pictures; 101 ways to use a Chorlton telephone box, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The dinosaur dropping through the door …… a lost clue to the past

Now I have to say that I thought the old-fashioned telephone directory had gone the way of the dinosaur, the dodo and the quaint custom of leaving a calling card to announce a future visit.

But not so, because today one such book of BT telephone subscribers dropped through our letter box with a clunk.

Back in the 1960s in Eltham we would receive four covering the whole of Greater London, and as late as the 1980s there would be two through the door for all of Manchester.

And then they stopped, and at much the same time I no longer phoned Directory Enquiries to find a number.

Instead the internet offered up a free and quick alternative, which also helped locate an address or post code, which was most useful when writing Christmas cards.

That said it only works if the person is a BT subscriber, which I suppose is why I longer appear in the newly arrived book or in the online directory.  We switched as part of a bigger switch to another provider over two decades ago.

But it never occurred to me that after 30 years our place in the list of all them wot had telephones would cease to be available to be perused.  At the time the entry read A. R. B. Simpson which I always thought was a tad pretentious but was how Kay thought it should read.

Not that this is a trivial or flippant story because the telephone directory is one of those very vital sources which help trace people from the past.

A Kabbaz, 1911

Of course, it only works from the 19th century and even into the next is limited by the small number of people who had a phone. But the upside is that as the lists were published annually you can track a person across the years, checking for changes to where they lived.

Added to which their appearance in the directory at the very dawn of the telephone, does offer up some interesting clues about their wealth, status, or just a progressive frame of mind.

 The first British book was issued in 1880 by the Telephone Company, and contained 248 names and addresses of individuals and businesses in London and that as they say was just the start.

K A Kabbaz, 1911

All self-respecting local studies centres should have old editions and the entire collection for the whole of the country dating back to 1880 can be accessed online.

So I know that Joe Scott who lived in our house from 1915 when it was built had a phone by the 1920s, while others in Chorlton who I have been following had theirs by 1901.

All of which challenges my title and makes me think I should retract the word dinosaur from the title.

Sadly we will no longer be able to be found.

Pictures; “BT’s 2022-23 Phone Book”, and entries fo the Kabbaz Brothers, 21 Cooper Street, from Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory, 1911, Part two, page 487, The National Telephone Company, 1901

Telephone Exchanges…….. doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 26

I have to say, I thought telephone exchanges were as dead  as the telegram, and VHS recorders.

But not so, as Barbarella’s picture of this one in Northenden testifies.

In my defence, I have always taken them for granted, and just assumed the onward march of how we communicate with each other had rendered them obsolete.

At which point I pause for all the technical experts to explain a]why I got it wrong and b] why telephone exchanges are still needed


Location; Northenden

Picture; in Northenden, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

Telephones Boxes I have known ............. part 5 signs and a story

Now I am part of that generation that grew up with the gas board, travelled on British Railways and trusted the Post Office to deliver both my mail and connect my telephone calls.

And despite the so called bright new dawn of competition which came in the 1980s I still hanker for those old public utilities.

I accept that some needed improvement particularly when it came to customer relations and the British Rail sandwich was indeed dire, but there was a lot to be said for a national service owned and funded by the country.

All of which is an introduction to the National Telephone Company which lasted for just thirty years and spanned the years when the telephone came into its own.

It been established in 1881 with the aim of to developing and operating telephone services in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Ulster and parts of Scotland and by degree bought up other regional companies.*

Finally in 1912 the Post Office took over the NTC and its telephone systems.

It is a story I was only vaguely aware of and so I have David Harrop to thank for setting me off on this little bit of telephone discovery which came about when he shared these enamelled telephone signs dating to the early years of the last century.

I suppose given what I have already said my favourite has to be the Post Office one but there is something equally attractive in the N.T.C., sign with its blue bell.

David tells me that the Avoncroft Museum near Broomsgrove has the National Telephone Collection which contains 32 telephone kiosks,  including every type used from 1912 to the present day. **

Now that will make for a fascinating visit and just adds stories of ttelephone boxes I have known.***

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

* National Telephone Company, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Telephone_Company

**Avoncroft Museum, http://www.avoncroft.org.uk/visit-us/

***Telephone Kiosks, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Telephone%20Kiosks

On rediscovering that the Postal Order still exists and pondering on the telegram, the trunk call and the big red telephone box

Three in a row, 2012, Knaresborough

I am always fascinated at the little bits of my past which have long since vanished.

And yesterday I was reminded of a shedful that have gone out with the tide.

It began with a phone call from our Joshua asking about Postal Orders.

Now I had to confess that I thought that they had long since ceased to exist.

In an age of PayPal, and card transactions with the persistent rumours that the cheque will soon go I just expected that the Postal Order had had its day.

When I was growing up and fewer people had bank accounts it was the most effective way of buying things through the post.

Postal Order, 1939

You bought it over the counter for the amount you needed, sent it by through the  mail and it was cashed at another post office.

And according to the Post Office it remains a simple way to send money, which can be used wherever you are to pay bills, and shop by mail order and offers peace of mind because there is no personal data required.*

What’s more it costs as little as 50p.

Not so the telegram which was a way of sending and receiving messages relatively cheaply and quickly but which died in stages after 139 years.

In the 1930s the Post Office was delivering on average 65 million telegrams per year.  But by the 1960s this had fallen to 10 million and by 1976 to just 844.*

Telegram, 1914

The decision to abolish the service was taken in 1977 and although the service lingered for a bit longer it was stopped in 1982.

That said I do not ever remember receiving one but then we had a telephone quite early in my childhood and that I suspect replaced the need for people to send us telegrams, although thinking about it I doubt that anything much exciting ever necessitated us getting one.

Not for that matter can I remember the telephone ever being used that much.  It was one of those solid black Bakelite affairs with a little tray which pulled out to reveal a space for telephone numbers.

And while I cannot remember our Co-op divi number or pretty much any subsequent telephone numbers, NEW 6251 leaps out of my memory.

Postal Dinky toys, pre 1939

But it is a measure of how far we have travelled with technology that back in the 1950s we had to share the line with another customer, and if on the rare occasion they were using the party line you could if you so chose listen into the conversation.

That simple incontinence became of course a superb device on the part of film makers and authors to advance a plot be it a sinister overheard threat or in the case of Doris Day and Rock Hudson an invitation to a sting of absurd story lines.***

Of course the party line is for most of us as remote as the delightful “trunk call” which resurfaced today in a blog by my friend Lois. ****

Toy postal Van, 1914

In those early years of telephones the only way a customer could call someone listed on another exchange was by asking the operator to connect them and this was a “truck call.”

In its way it was as much a special event as making the “long distance call” and today both sound old fashioned a tad quaint.

Much as I suspect is the red telephone box  which while it does still exist is now fast disappearing.

They first appeared in 1920 mushroomed in the telephone war of the 1980s and are now fading like snow in the winter sun.

But they are for another time.

Pictures; three red telephone boxes, 2012, Knaresborough from the collection of Andrew Simpson, telegram, 1914, Postal Order, 1939 and pre war Dinky Toys and mail van, circa 1914 courtesy of David Harrop

*Postal Order, the Post Office, http://www.postoffice.co.uk/postal-orders

**Telegram messenger, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_messenger,

***Pillow Talk, 1959


****Trunk Call, http://loiselden.com/2015/04/19/trunk-call/