YOU'RE THROUGH, CALLER!

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition was in fact last year's winners. I thought it was a bit odd that the annual touring exhibition should make its first port of call a small regional museum in the North East! No indeed, I should have realised that we'd get it last, but it was still no less impressive for that, especially the junior entries. I'm not sure whether it inspired me or made me feel completely inadequate! I'm glad we went, though.

Outside was this old phone box. Oldies among you may remember when we had to put the coins in the slot, and then when the operator had connected the call and the other person picked up we pressed Button A and the coins dropped. Or if there was no reply we pressed Button B for the coins to be returned. And quite often we'd have had to queue to use the phone box since not everyone had phones at home, and it was long before the days of mobile phones, of course.

I found this mundane, yet strangely fascinating, little film from 1970 about the technological wizardry that brought direct dialling to us. Anyone who can bear to watch the whole thing will be rewarded by a fairly low level (for the time) of women - sorry, "girls" - being patronised, and the sight of women working in the drawing office and as engineers. And then, as the excitement mounts and switchover time approaches, there's the Big Cheese from Post Office Communications, who rejoiced in the name of Mr Peter Lillicrap.