7 Reasons

Tag: Phone Box

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    Those wishing to avoid excessive roaming charges while exploring the far flung corners of the globe may assume that relying on emails and instant messaging services offer the best way to stay in touch with those left behind. There are, however, many cheap ways to call home while travelling, and plenty of reasons to do so – here are just seven of them.

    7 Reasons To Call Home Regularly While Travelling

    1.  To check on your housesitters. So you’re off on a year’s trip around the world and you’ve rented the house out to that lovely old Mrs Bates. Admittedly her son Norman was a little creepy, but everything will be alright, won’t it? There are simply some occasions when an email just can’t give you the reassurances you need, and a human voice can.

    2.  To gloat. You may have posted your photos on Facebook and kept your travel blog full of daring escapades and tantalising travel titbits, but nothing can make you enjoy your holidays more than hearing those miserable voices from back home still moaning about the weather, congestion on the road to work and humdrum details of their daily life. Make that call to really feel great about your break.

    3.  To borrow money. After kicking off your travels with a week in Monte Carlo, your carefully made travel budget plans may suddenly be looking about as secure as the Greek economy. When the chips are down, a pleading email for money just won’t give you the emotional edge that you require to secure that couple of thousand needed to carry out your itinerary. Make sure you’re ready to sound really desperate as your fingers dial home.

    4.  To secure favours. It’s lovely to get a phone call from a friend or relative who has been out of the country for a while and you can make that warm glow work to your advantage. Once you’ve made sure they’re feeling special and loved (“I just wanted to hear your voice to make me feel like I was home…”) you can get them working for you to finish off all those bits you didn’t get around to before dropping everything and taking off on your trip of a lifetime.

    Garden watered – check. Mail opened and answered – check. Taxing your motorbike (“It’s just impossible from this godforsaken place”) – check. With just one or two phone calls it can be a done deal.

    5.  To apologise for the lack of birthday presents. That special anniversary or birthday really shouldn’t be missed just because you’re away. If there’s an internet connection, there is always Amazon and they’ll even gift wrap it for you. It just is so easy to forget dates back home when you’re far away from it but, don’t worry, a phone call can put things right. There is, however, one date that you forget at your peril. You don’t need to send a present but this could truly be your last trip anywhere, ever, if you don’t call home on Mother’s Day.

    6.  To speak to work. Sometimes we just need to extend our travels. After all, the flights have all been paid for and we’re already in Asia, so an extra couple of weeks won’t cost the earth ─ if only it can be squared with the boss. This one is best handled by a call rather than an email. And, if you need that job when you return get your reasons, excuses and sob stories straight before you’re connected.

    7.  Because it’s just so darn cheap! Calling home from abroad simply doesn’t have to be expensive. With internet calls offered by VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services you can actually call home from most places in the world for free.

    Skype allows you to make phone or video calls but with services like those offered by Vonage.co.uk you don’t even need a computer to make an internet call. Find out how to set up a new phone number that you can use from any phone near a broadband supply and you could be calling home from anywhere for the price of a local call. Now you have no excuses!

  • 7 Reasons To Use A Phone Box

    7 Reasons To Use A Phone Box

    1.  You’re A Superhero. This only applies to people called Clark, Peter or Jonathan, but even so. It is fully acceptable to pull red pants over your blue lycra body suit in a phone box, providing you have one of these names and are in some way associated with a newspaper. You could be a journalist, a photographer or pick up a copy of the Evening Standard on the way home each day.

    2.  You Need Shelter. Rain. Snow. Hail. Nuclear Bomb. Get in a phone box and wait until it has passed. If you are in flip-flops make sure you watch out for the syringes.

    3.  You’re Foreign. If there is one thing you need to do as a visitor to Great Britain it is to have your photo taken next to or in one of our red phone boxes. I am not sure why you have a such a fascination with them, they pretty much do the same job as a grey phone box, but I am not going to stand in your way. Most of the people in this country have moved onto mobile phones these days so it is nice to see someone using them.

    4.  You Need To Promote Your Business. Phone boxes are perfect if you want to stick up a flyer or business card. The main advantage of using a phone box is that it’s free, the disadvantage is that you will have a lot of competition. The best way of standing out from the crowd is to reduce your ridiculously high hourly rates.

    5.  You Don’t Own A Mobile. This may sound obvious, but I have lost count of the number of times someone has walked up to me and said, “Sorry mate, I have forgotten my phone. Can I borrow yours for a minute?” Don’t ask me for my phone. The chances are you are going to run off with it. Go and try and steal a phone box instead. And make sure you bend your knees. They are bloody heavy.

    6.  You Are Embarrassed To Make That Call At Home. I speak from personal experience here. When I was younger I used to ask girls out with frightening regularity. Not because I was very, very horny, but because the vast majority rejected me so I just had to move on to the next one. The idea of asking a girl out in earshot of my parents terrified me though, so I used to walk down to the local phone box with 10p in my hand (yes, it was that long ago) and then spend twenty minutes building up the courage to call my latest crush. Two minutes later I walked home poorer and heartbroken.

    7.  You Need To Get Your Hat Back. It’s such a bore when you are walking along the road and suddenly someone flies by, grabs your hat and chucks it atop the nearest phone box. Five minutes later the Police have pulled up and are asking you to get down from its roof. This also applies to bus stops.