Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 174

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!

My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

A friend of mine visited the Zeppelin-Museum and sent me this picture as he knows I have made a bead loomed tapestry of a "Metropolis" film poster despite never having watched the movie (I have it, but it's so not my genre ... and how is it possible I never wrote a post about the tapestry??).
I love this poster. Isn't it wonderful?

Last week I started to link up to Anne's and Olivia's "Friday Book Snippets" where you share a quote - a sentence or short paragraph - from the beginning of a book you read at the moment (in my case at the moment I'm writing this post) and one from page 56 (or another).

Today, mine are from "The Astral Library" by Kate Quinn.
Beginning: "Have you ever wanted to live inside a book?"
Page 77: "The Astral Library. The words echoed around the inside of my head as I stood there, heart thudding like a cannon. Smart-ass Alix Watson for once utterly speechless as I looked at the woman in the cardigan."

I think that's a great start and it made me curious.
I'm not so sure about the second snippet, but that's because I absolutely hate the stereotype of a librarian wearing a cardigan although I know that others embrace it (I own one cardigan myself which I have never worn at the library, and honestly, there's something like the "librariancore" trend?). Well, we'll see if the Astral Library is a place I'd like to apply to.


Back to the Weekend Traffic Jam now.
As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Innerdialects.

Rayla from Innerdialects says: "Thankyou for being here. We trust you will find some words or images you can resonate with. Years ago when someone first introduced me to blogging, I said it sounded like a cave with an open sesame password.
It sounded fun and dangerous and deep. It could be dark, it could be a light you carried in with you, or you walked with some. Blogging has proved to be all that and more. I started out with three other blogs that separately hosted verse, words, and one with a few letters to my kids. Noel (Jeff) and I have 3 insanely precious children now grown into their own dimensions.
When I began there was this urge to write; but living a life as mom and wife and freelance writing/art… phew, it was) is a fantastic thing to do: a Juggling act. There are tough days when someone is ill but even there, and perhaps specially through those times, there’s been this journey to the Light, which is what Innerdialects is all about."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Ann's fairy house is hiding a secret ...

Barbara is talking about the small pleasures of her week.

Joanne shows us her favorite picture books from her childhood.

Olivia is talking about an emotion she can't name.



Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England

You don't know it, but you may have heard of another Maurice Tourneur film already. Or read about it - in my post about "The Blue Bird".
Let's talk about "The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England" from 1914 today.

As usual here's the plot (with spoilers).

Giles is the son of the Earl of Bateson and one of those students that take their studies extremely seriously. At least that's what he tells his father. Unfortunately, reality looks a little different and Giles gets kicked out of school - and then kicked out at home when his father is informed of the truth. Maybe he shouldn't have to tried to sell Dad the story of a vacation "as a recompense for exemplary conduct". You don't try to pull such a stunt on a grumpy old man suffering from gout.
The Earl refuses to let Giles come back until he has earned half a crown without anyone's help.

It's true, Giles is absolutely irresponsible and Entitlement is his middle name. He takes fruit from a woman and when she protests, he throws it back at her. He kicks a little dog (which is only implied, not seen) and laughs about it. We don't like Giles at that point.
The dog runs home and we learn he's the companion of Sally, the poor parson's daughter.

Luckily, Giles has a wealthy godfather, Squire Annesley. The Squire who has just been left by his gardener after scolding him because some of his roses have been stolen is about to go on a journey and decides to help by appointing Giles to take care of his roses while he's away.
Giles discovers the rose thief quickly enough, it's Sally.
Her argument that flowers are God's gift to humans, poor or rich, doesn't quite convince him. When she shows him, however, that the flowers are meant for decorating the humble church, he not only tells her to keep them, but also treats her to some bread and jam. Then Sally invites him home to meet her father.
There's clearly love in the air as Giles even smiles through Sally's off-key singing and drinking her dandelion brew! 

On their first walk together, they visit a gypsy camp and Sally buys a silver "wishing ring".
The Squire sends Giles a letter asking him to invite all the neighbors for a lawn party to celebrate his return. Of course he includes Sally and her father, but she has nothing to wear, so "The Wishing Ring" aka Giles sends her a new dress, a hat, and shoes.

At the lawn party, Sally and the parson find out Giles's true identity when he loses the Earl's letter, and Sally sets out on a mission to reconcile father and son bearing gifts, introducing her dog and challenging the Earl to a game of chess. He's enchanted, but refuses to talk about Giles.

Thinking that a remedy for the gout will help, Sally visits the gypsies again and gets told to pick a magic herb on Devil's Cliff at midnight by the light of the moon which she does right away.

I'm legally bound to mention movie scenes with cats.
This cat is even shown twice.

The next morning, the parson finds Sally gone and ask some young villagers to help him search. One of them thinks of taking the dog that leads them to Sally who has fallen from Devil's Cliff.
When the Earl hears about this, he forgets all about his gout, calls for a horse and gets on his way. Unfortunately, the horse founders and he asks for a new one at the inn. The innkeeper runs to the Squire where Giles tells him to take the horse from the stable - for whose use the Earl pays half a crown which the innkeeper takes back to Giles telling him about Sally's accident.

When Giles and his father meet at Sally's bed, the Earl gets angry and wants to leave, but Sally hands him the half crown and Giles tells him that he himself has unknowingly paid him with it.

Everyone is invited to the wedding feast, village girls and boys, school masters and soldiers, gypsies - and of course Sally's dog!

I love how the young girl is eating.
That's concentration.

From the title and after watching "The Blue Bird", I had the idea that this would be another fairy tale with a moral, but actually it's a romcom and such a sweet one!
The title is a bit misleading, the wishing ring really doesn't play such a big role except allowing Giles to give Sally the new party dress anonymously.

I loved to see how Sally's uncomplicated and enthusiastic behavior - maybe a bit too uncomplicated in regards to the roses, couldn't she have asked the Squire? - changed Giles, but I think you could already see that Giles isn't a bad egg when the Squire told him to take care of his roses. No complaining, on with the apron and off he went even if we don't know how well he did it.
It was also lovely to see how quickly Sally captured the Earl's heart. I got "Little Lord Fauntleroy" vibes from that, it was enough that Sally was being her uninhibited self, just like Cedric, no idea of class differences or shyness.

We have a charming romance, we have our funny bits, we have our drama, what's not to like?
Especially with pictures as beautiful as this one? Admit it, that looks like a good spot for a break.

The movie is based on Owen Davis's play from 1910 which explains the opening and ending with the proscenium and curtain and the silent chorus of four young girls whom we meet several times throughout the film.

Now let's get to the real hero, though, Gyp Williams as "The Orphan". Oh wait, I haven't mentioned an orphan yet? Well, not under that name ... yes, our little Gyp is billed fourth, and if you ask me, he deserves it for his splendid performance!

Oh, and by the way, this is another lucky find when film historian Kevin Brownlow came upon it in a defunct film library and didn't even think it was worth the asking price at first! 

This one is definitely going on my favorite silent movie list.


Sources and further reading:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Wishing Ring (1914) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, September 21, 2014
2. Kyle Westphal: The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England. On: Library of Congress. National Film Preservation Board. Documents

Fall feelings

Last week, Erin from "Still Live, With Cracker Crumbs" announced that she and Lisa from "Boondock Ramblings" will not have a "Comfy Cozy Cinema" event on their blogs this year. Instead they'll be doing "Sweater Weather Cinema" with fall movies ... and I found myself thinking that I didn't really know any except for Halloween movies and therefore probably wouldn't be able to participate.

Of course I know movies with fall scenes, but I never thought of them specifically as fall movies. To be honest, I had never thought about that topic at all until now.
Here Erin explains what a fall movie is for her. Check it out and if you have your own favorites, let her know and maybe tag along for the "Sweater Weather Cinema" with her and Lisa?

Now I let people know a lot - whether they want to hear it or not - that fall is my favorite season. I love the colors, the rain, the air, and of course saying goodbye to summer (and the fan).
However, I was surprised myself to find that many fall inspired items I made over the years, this is not even everything!

And of course I can't forget my Autumn Dawn and my Fairy Queen Jessica!

I guess I express my feelings in beads and wire?

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 173

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!

My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Do you ever wonder where your brain went without telling you?
The other day, I was in the kitchen and put some "emergency bread" into the oven (I don't bake and ran out of my bread from the bakery, but I usually have something in the fridge for cases like these). I set the timer and then boiled water for my favorite tea, topped up Gundel's plate - you know just stuff you do when you're waiting. Then I went back to my book, but there was a little voice telling me I forgot something.
Indeed I did. I had set the timer, but hadn't turned the oven on!
I'm truly the Queen of the Kitchen ...

I'm much better with books and decided to give Anne's and Olivia's "Friday Book Snippets" a try where you share a quote - a sentence or short paragraph - from the beginning of a book you read at the moment and one from page 56 (or another).

Today, mine are from "A Tiger's Wedding" by British actress Isla Blair.
Beginning: "I banged my sandals together to shake out any cockroaches or scorpions, the gesture an automatic reflex, like saying 'bless you' when someone sneezed."
Page 56: "The greatest change was in Fiona. At night there'd be choking sounds from her bed, which she'd try to muffle with her pillow and when I asked her if she was crying, she always said no. But she was - a gulping sort of crying."

Now let's get to the Weekend Traffic Jam!
As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Di-alog.

Di from Di-alog says: ... well, actually I couldn't find anything, but I can tell you that Di is a fashion blogger sharing her outfits and sometimes those of her husband Roger. Maybe one of the other hosts know more!

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Pat's community has had a "bear filled summer".

You won't be surprised that I enjoyed seeing Mireille's beaded earrings and the outfits she wore with them.

Lisa presents the 1945 movie "Without Love" with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

Deb takes stock now that spring starts in Australia.

Nicole talks about crazy clothes sizing.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent Movies - Mighty Like a Moose

Last week I talked about an affair that had a tragic ending for some, today's affair is very different.
If I tell you that Charley Chase is part of this one, you may remember that he was known for comedy. I think we deserve one after last week's drama.
I give you "Mighty Like a Moose" from 1926 (seems I'm stuck in this year at the moment, but that's mere coincidence!).

Let's start with the plot (spoiler alert!).

Mr. Moose has buck teeth and Mrs. Moose has a big nose.

The neighbor kids - no respect. I had to add this picture because it reminds me of the scene in "A Christmas Story" when the kids pranked their teacher by wearing fake buck teeth (from wax as you can read in the book that inspired the movie ... I'm digressing, sorry).

Both Mr. and Mrs. Moose have saved for months to surprise their spouse with a face lift - et voilà.

Mr. Moose's dentist has a before and after picture taken and also presents his patient with a set of false teeth so his family will still be able to recognize him. He also invites him to a party this evening, but Mr. Moose declines saying he's married.
Then he meets Mrs. Moose in the hallway, but they don't recognize each other and start flirting, so he invites her to the party. They both don't feel very good about betraying their spouse, but on the other hand they can't resist after seeing the effect of their respective surgeries.

They arrive at home separately and don't notice each other at first doing kind of a "dance" around each other - one comes into a room when the other one is just leaving it.
Once at the party, Mr. Moose tries to get a dance with his date, but instead she gets whisked away while he is asked to dance with a lady who only knows the polka (unfortunately I didn't manage to get a screenshot that really conveys how hilarious that dance is).
What no one knows is that the police is already waiting to raid the party as they suspect the doctor of alcohol possession (prohibition time!) and "arrest everybody for practice".
Mr. Moose has spotted the policemen and warns Mrs. Moose. They both turn around only to have their picture taken by the police. Remember, they don't know they're a married couple.

At home, Mr. Moose is surprised to find his date entering his house shortly after him. He overhears her telling the maid about the surgery and is shocked that his wife betrayed him. So he tells Mrs. Moose as her date that he can't live without her, then comes back with his false teeth, and finally stages a fight between "the date" and "the husband" (with the help of a swinging boot).

Unfortunately for him, Mrs. Moose has found the newspaper which also shows the before and after picture of her husband. When she slaps him for trying to trick her with the fake fight, he loses the false teeth.
Where are they? Oh, found them!

Mistaken identities have been the base for comedies for a long time. So when one reviewer writes that he doesn't understand how they didn't recognize each other, it made me laugh.
My favorite example - Clark Kent/Superman. For some weird reason, people still know who I am even without my glasses.
At least, we learn that Mrs. Moose has also bought new clothes her husband doesn't know yet.

I was also delighted at the immediate success of the surgeries. No bandages, no traces, no pain, the patient hops out of the chair and everyone is happy.
Don't we wish it really were that easy?
If you wonder, by the way, nose jobs have been around for quite some time - first in India around 600 B.C. In the West, they really caught on in the late 19th century and were not just used for mere aesthetics later, but also to help men wounded in the war. 

The fight Mr. Moose had with himself obviously wasn't realistic, either, especially at the end when he changed identities in seconds and always came from the same side.
All of that was cleverly edited, only Superman could have been this fast.

Does all of that matter, though? Of course it doesn't!
The whole movie used the wonderful choreography to make the audience laugh, and it sure worked for me.
I also enjoyed the funny title cards. My favorite was the one when Mr. Moose enters the house and gets attacked by his dog who doesn't recognize him with the new teeth so he has to put the fake set in.

This is of course a hint at RCA's Nipper listening to "His Master's Voice" (check out my post about Nipper if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Conclusion - is the movie realistic? No. Is it funny? Heck, yeah!
Even "laughing out loud" funny to me.
So far I enjoyed every Charley Chase film I have watched and I'm looking forward to exploring more of them.


Further reading:

Fritzi Kramer: Mighty Like a Moose (1926) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 27, 2014

Tell Us About ... Poetry

Time again for the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the month.
My posts will go live a little early (to avoid collision with the silent films), so if the posts of the others are not live yet, please check back later.
The current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After, Marsha in the Middle, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and me. It's fun to learn how differently everyone interprets a topic.
You can play along and link up with us!
If that's too short notice for you, maybe next time? Here are the prompts for the coming months:
October - Birthday
November - Superstition
December - Why do you blog?

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

The prompt for today was "Poetry", chosen by Marsha.
Oh Marsha. If you asked me, I'd say don't have a poetic bone in my body. I have never written a poem myself, not even bad ones as a teenager - unless you count the group effort in our literature class - and the first thing I associate with poems is reciting them in German class, limericks in English class, and of course the various "Poesiealben" in my life, those of others and my own (if you don't know what those are, check out the link).

My first real encounter with poetry - except for nursery rhymes - was probably when I won this little book in the lottery of a church fest in the 70s.
I read the poems dutifully, all 28 examples of "great German ballads" as the subtitle tells us, (eight of them by Goethe, figures), because that's what you do when you win something (I also used the colorful plastic egg cups and spoons I won at the same fest), but the only one that really stuck was the fairy ballad "Erlkönig", possibly because of the creepy ending.

Having to recite and interpret poems in school didn't make them any more interesting to me. I have to confess that I often only started learning them by heart the day before which usually worked out fine. It happened only twice that I painfully stuttered my way through poems, Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling" and Mörike's "Der Feuerreiter" (both of which are actually in this book). Isn't it weird how I still remember the embarrassment, but not the grades I got? The reason is probably knowing I deserved them both, but the embarrassment weighed heavier.
One year, I asked my German teacher what I'd get for reciting Schiller's "Die Bürgschaft". It had obviously been meant as a joke in a conversation, but she challenged the whole class to do that for an extra 1 (as small part of the "oral grade") and to her surprise about a third of the class did it. The ballad has 150 lines and I can only remember the first seven.
Don't dare ask me how much I remember of "Der Zauberlehrling"!

I like a lot of classical music, but when I still played the violin (in the 17th century) or sang in choirs (until the late 19th century aka before a thyroid surgery took most of my range away), I actively looked for it and now I stumble upon it.
It's the same with poems. I don't hate all poems that materialize in my path, on social media, for example, or as part of a novel.
These days, the only poems I read intentionally are by Bill Bilston. They materialized thanks to a friend sharing them on Facebook and stuck. Check out his homepage with the newsletter and you will probably understand why.
I even own one of his books (so far). That one won't surprise you, either.

What about song lyrics, though?
I found an article by René Ostberg on "Britannica" that ends with "The debate over whether songs are poems (or whether poems are songs) may never end. But no one can deny that poetry and music are art forms of universal power and beauty."
If lyrics aren't poems, what does that mean for a poem that has been turned into a song? Such as Franz Schubert's version of "Erlkönig"? Is it still a poem because a "poet" wrote it - and how do we define a poet? Can't a musician be also a poet? Feel free to debate that, but let me tell you that the German word "Poet" isn't used that much anymore, we say "Lyriker" instead. Exactly, just as in the English word "lyrics" for song texts which we call, well song texts, just in German.



Actually, we have a radio channel that has had a show called "Pop & Poesie" for a long time. You hear a song and the German translation. I always hated it because the translation was a voiceover and I wanted to hear the song. It became so popular, however, that the idea developed into "Pop & Poesie in Concert" in 2008. Actors and actresses perform the original and the German translations - open air in summer - and then a band performs the song. An important part of the concert is the interaction between moderator, performers and audience.
I hate crowds, so I have never been there, but in this format I can imagine you get to experience and feel song lyrics differently - like poetry.
There are certainly song texts I regard as such and I remember a lot more of those, believe me. So maybe there's a small poetic bone there after all.


Now let's see what the others have to tell us.

Amy uses poetry for fun with friends and family.  Her grandmother has a published book of poems and her mom wrote a Christmas poem each year for her cards. 

Suzy writes about the time she accidentally became a published poet, despite never really considering herself a poetry person!

Debbie looks back at posts from 2016 where she made poems using online magnetic tiles - it was part of a craze she went through!  Who knew it would prove useful 10 years later?

Sally shares some of her favorite American poets and poems.

Marsha writes about her two favorite poems.  I wonder if you’ll be surprised!

This month’s prompt threw Leslie for a loop.

Stop by her blog for more of the scoop.

Your turn! Poems - yes or no?


P.S. I forgot that I still remember some of Heinz Erhardt's poems, but since he was a German comedian, actor, poet, etc. you wouldn't know him, anyway.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

The iconic phone box

I'm old. So old that I have plenty of memories of standing in a yellow "Telefonzelle" (literally "phone cell") for a phone call, either because I didn't want anyone to listen in at home - calls to my boyfriend - or because I was out and about. Yes, so old that I spent half of my life without a cell phone.
Not all of those memories were good ... like the time I called the ex to tell him I flunked my first driving test. Others were weird ... like the time I had a kind of party line effect and one person didn't understand that I had not even called them.

I remember the times when there were no telephone cards and you could only pay with coins, even those when a local call was really cheap even if you talked longer than a few minutes.
At the time, you could still see the coins you put in run down the chute behind a little window. Making an international call made your money disappear faster than ice in hot water.

That brings back memories
although my very first ones are
of black phones.

The wrong telephone model, but
the right phone box (on the right).
Picture by Juergen Rosskamp,
 CC BY-SA 2.0 DE 
via Wikimedia Commons

The title, however, may give you an idea of "the iconic phone box" (hint: not calling it phone booth) I really want to talk about.
It's of course the British phone box in red - the K series from K1 to K8 (K standing for kiosk).

K2 and K6 (the most common model) telephone
 boxes in Smithfield Market
Picture by Mike Quinn, CC BY-SA 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

As you can tell, however, it's not a Random Saturday post which is a sign that I'm not going to talk about its history in detail.
Instead I'm going to show you my latest Lego project.
I've had the set around since October 2025 and there's a reason why I had completely forgotten about it until now.
Now it was high time, however, to get the (Lego) box off the floor and the (phone) box on my shelf.
At least, I kept telling that myself for a few weeks. Until we had a partial power failure in the house. To distract myself during waiting for either a technician fixing it remotely or having to come to us to check it out, I finally grabbed the box and started.
Two days later, they found the problem hadn't been solved and turned the power off for repairs (actually the whole block had been affected). So cut off from everything (except contact via my 18 year old cell phone which was charged for a change), I managed to keep going. Silver linings, eh?

This phone box is based on the K2 kiosk.
There were telephone kiosks even before the K1 which was made from concrete with a teak door.
Only with the K2 which was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (like the cheaper K3 and later the K2 successor K6) and chosen by the GPO (Post Office) out of five models in 1925, phone boxes got their red color.
The first K2 was erected in Charing Cross Road 100 years ago - in March 1926 -, the others were set up mostly in London as it was a costly design.
Today, around 200 of them still exist and are listed Grade II (buildings etc. of special interest in a national context).
If you are interested in more details, check out the article cited below.

It almost took me 100 years to build the kiosk, at least it felt like it - all my own fault too as I had to bring in the wrecking ball more than once to fix a few very stupid mistakes. But hey, I have those inexplicable bouts of patience and determination, just ignore the bite marks in the bench and the tears on the phone box, please 😜

I love the fence, it reminds me of some in front of
houses in my old neighborhood which I loved even as a child.

Detail views

K2 interior for comparison
Picture by Murgatroyd49,
CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The phone box has a light brick. You press a button on top of the kiosk
and it lights up. It was hard to press the button and take a good picture
of the whole kiosk in the dark at the same time, but you get the idea.

It will look really good next to my London bus, don't you think?


Source and further reading (very interesting article):

Nigel Linge, Neil Johannessen, Andrew Hurley, Andy Simmons & Andy Sutton: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s K2 Telephone Kiosk — A Design Classic. In: Industrial Archeology Review, 46, 2024, 2, pp. 87 - 98. DOI 10.1080/03090728.2024.2410137 (open access)