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Inside Out: An Audiotour

4 / 10 Two Red Phone Boxes

‘One listening. One talking. One calling. One answering. Or two voices. Talking at once? Hello? Are you there? Hello? Are you there?’

Gary Molloy, painter, poet and mental health activist: ‘Having absconded from hospital in 1990, I’d found myself coming across this phone box in Homerton. It was almost like a sanctuary. Typical smelly broken phone box. Opening the box, it stunk inside and the windows were all broken. The phone still worked and I had 10p in my pocket … Got through to my dad. The seconds seemed to take forever to go down. The conversation only lasted about 20 seconds, but it did seem like 20 minutes. It was almost like this place was a sanctuary. I think I even stayed there until he picked me up. I thought he was going to take me home for a slap-up dinner and, 'How’s the weather.' No, no, no. He took me back to hospital. I was in there again.’

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A pair of red telephone boxes: the crimson twins, 2016 © Patrick Henry
Gary Molloy, 2016 © Sophie Polyviou