英國紅色電話亭變身迷你圖書館

Britain's iconic red phone boxes have become obsolete in the age of the mobile -- but villages across the country are stepping in to save them, with creative flair.

Whether as a place to exhibit art, poetry, or even as a tiny library, hundreds of kiosks have been given a new lease of life by local communities determined to preserve a quintessential part of British life.

In Waterperry, a small village near Oxford, the 120 residents have filled the phone box next to the old manor house with a pot of hyacinths, piles of gardening and cooking magazines, and plastered poems on the walls.

They took control of the kiosk when telecoms operator BT said it was going to pull it down, an announcement that sparked such uproar that one local woman threatened to chain herself to the box to save it.

"I'd have done it," insisted Kendall Turner. "It would have been heartbreaking for the village."

Local councillor Tricia Hallam, who came up with the idea for the phone box's makeover, said "quite a few people" would have joined her, adding: "We couldn't let it go because it's a landmark, it's part of our heritage.

"We need to keep it here, it's an iconic thing, a British icon."

Only three feet by three feet wide, and standing eight foot three inches tall, the kiosks were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1936 for the 25th anniversary of the reign of King George V.

Painted in "Post Office red" to match the post boxes, they were once a defining image of England and the backdrop to millions of tourist photographs.

Eight years ago there were about 17,000 across Britain, but today, in a country where almost everybody has a mobile phone, 58 percent are no longer profitable and ten percent are only used once a month.

在如今的移動通訊時代，英國標誌性的紅色電話亭已漸漸過時，但英國各地的小鎮居民正發揮他們的聰明才智來保衛這些“紅盒子”。

紅色公用電話亭被視爲英國社會的文化標誌，在社區居民的努力下，英國數百個電話亭獲得新生，被用來展示藝術、詩歌，甚至變身爲迷你圖書館。

在牛津郡附近的沃特佩裏小鎮，120名居民在一個緊挨着一處古老的領主宅邸的電話亭裏放上了一盆風信子、幾疊園藝及廚藝雜誌，並在亭壁上貼了一些詩作。

這座電話亭曾險些被英國電信公司拆毀，但當地居民將其挽救了下來。當時電信公司要拆除電話亭的消息引發了民衆的強烈不滿，當地一名婦女還威脅要把自己和電話亭拴在一起來保衛它。

肯德爾•特納堅稱：“要是我也會那樣做。拆除電話亭會讓小鎮居民們很傷心。”

想到改造電話亭這一辦法的當地議員特里希婭•哈勒姆說，（如果要拆毀的話，）會“有很多人”加入到保衛電話亭的隊伍。她說：“我們不能就讓它這麼沒了，因爲它是我們的地標，是我們的遺產之一。”

“我們要把它留在這裏，它是一種標誌，是英國的標誌。”

英國的紅色電話亭長寬各只有3英尺，高爲8英尺3英寸，是1936年加爾斯·吉爾伯特·斯哥特爲紀念國王喬治五世統治25週年而設計的。

電話亭的顏色爲“郵政紅”，與英國郵政信箱的顏色相一致。這些紅色電話亭曾是英國的標誌性形象，也是遊客們爭相留影的街頭一景。

八年前，英國全國共有約1.7萬個電話亭，但如今英國幾乎人手一部手機，58%的電話亭已不再盈利，其中10%的電話亭一個月才被使用一次。

Vocabulary:

kiosk:公用電話亭

a new lease of life：新生

quintessential：representing the perfect example of a class or quality（精粹的，精髓的）

plaster on:在上面塗抹或粘貼