What are you all up to

Margaret's Dad had a lock on the phone in their house

Dad

Steve,

I assume you are talking about the  infamous Scamps Money Boxes aka Button A, Button B horrors there !!  It was a regular thing to find some crumpled-up paper bunging up the Returned Money chute, done normally by the yobos to supply a few big old pennies for their chewing gum needs .  Occasionally they got totally blocked so some poor engineer had to unlock and remove the front plate, swivel out the mechanism and remove the coins. Then replace & lock up the mechanism, before calling the operators and asking them to "Listen To xx coins  please." inserting the coins and finally giving her your initials to clear your name. 

Oh yes, the years of fun outside that a couple of City & Guilds passes got me out of  

It was a bigger problem when the postman broke the key in the cash box lock.

Locks on the dial didn’t work because you could tap the number on the switch hooks.

Much prefer the uses that old phone boxes can be put to now-a-days ! I seem to recall one by a sandy bay in Scotland, carefully cleaned and carpeted with shelves of books for borrowing. Just don't try that in a 20th century town centre .

Our house (my husband’s Grandfather was living here then) got the phone in 1930. The number  - 3X6 - stayed  the same until 1968.

I don't think anyone knew that!!! Shame you are 55 years too late in telling me that as it would have been fun to have tried

David

Another delight of staying on Club sites before mobile phones was the evening queue for the site phone, obviously too expensive to phone during the day

David

Yes I forgot it used to be a lower rate, after 6pm I think. 
Even better was feeding francs and centimes into the French telephone boxes before they installed the phone card ones. Fortunately they were in use when my son phoned up for his O Level results. That really gobbled up the card, it would have been very difficult to keep up feeding in coins.😂

Lots of old phone boxes are having defibrillator units fitted into them in our town, saw one being revamped just before we went away. Lots in use as tiny libraries in rural villages as well. The old red ones are such an iconic item.