Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

LongGone wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:25 am I don’t remember any phones. On the other hand no family had a phone at home, so it was no loss.

My mother's employers had one; it was number 8. I don't remember it ever being used

My father's number was 5. He had a phone because he was a country vicar, and the 'exchange' was in the village shop, with a jack-field numbered 1-8. Everything had to be put through by Mrs Shopkeeper - she could, of course, listen in as she chose. We had no mains electricity or water...

MrEd wrote: ↑Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:31 pm One half-term someone in Leigh Hunt B went to France and came back with a load of what we called 'French Bangers' (being then 2nd and 3rd Formers, no Sid James sniggers please), which were Chinese fireworks not available in the UK. Anyway, these were a great source of entertainment. Various uses were found, such as putting them into packs of warm butter and detonating in the Day Room, showering the ceiling with butter, or putting into roast potatoes and throwing into a study, or the small red or green ones were chucked under the loo doors when a cubicle was in use.

Haha, we used to put them in apples and throw them off the roof of Maine A to watch them explode in mid air

The phone boxes were painted green in the 80's 3 in total that i knew of , Pe LH & near Wardrobe. just before the girls came they instead put phones in each house in the under stairs broom cupboard. Someone soon worked out that whilst they were coin phones they were owned buy the school not BT and the school kept the £, this also meant as far as BT were concerned they were on the schools account, so you could make reverse charge calls to them which soon got around (you could for example ring MaB form LhB by ringing 100 and asking for a reversed charge call and the person answering would say yes they accepted) - that lasted a couple of months until the school got the first bills with hundreds of reverse charge calls.

Whilst on the old phones you had a few seconds pre pips to shout who you were so you mum could ring back, the new ones you had to put 10p in before calling and as soon as they answered the coin was eaten, so you had to ring twice and hang up and wait for the call back.

In LHA on my Grecians I had the old games locker as my study so was closest to the phone - it was very distracting when the phone during prep etc and I had to answer it so I developed all sorts of mad ways of answering it to get the caller of the phone sharp, form answering "hugh,pugh, barney Mrcrue, cuthbert, dibble and grump - trumpton firestation here, what is your emergency ?" to just answering saying "hello is John there ?" and pretending i was making an outgoing call

I must also admit that the disused LH phone box was used for catapult target practice after Alevels but it already had few glass pains left by then

Not a phone in sight in our day was there Katharine. No letter boxes either. All letters had to be left unsealed so the wardmistress could read them. I came close to expulsion for posting a letter on the way up to Ashbourne.

wurzel wrote: ↑Tue Aug 28, 2018 12:21 pm I developed all sorts of mad ways of answering it to get the caller of the phone sharp, form answering "hugh,pugh, barney Mrcrue, cuthbert, dibble and grump - trumpton firestation here, what is your emergency ?" to just answering saying "hello is John there ?" and pretending i was making an outgoing call

Probably like you I get umpteen spam and scam phone calls. Over my desk I have a six and a half page list of replies, most would get me thrown off this forum but here is a safe one (not personal to you!)

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid but you abuse the privelege"

sejintenej wrote: ↑Tue Aug 28, 2018 2:26 pm

wurzel wrote: ↑Tue Aug 28, 2018 12:21 pm I developed all sorts of mad ways of answering it to get the caller of the phone sharp, form answering "hugh,pugh, barney Mrcrue, cuthbert, dibble and grump - trumpton firestation here, what is your emergency ?" to just answering saying "hello is John there ?" and pretending i was making an outgoing call

Probably like you I get umpteen spam and scam phone calls. Over my desk I have a six and a half page list of replies, most would get me thrown off this forum but here is a safe one (not personal to you!)

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid but you abuse the privelege"

Or.....

"Does Matron know you haven't taken your medication today ?"

Or.....

"Does the Mayor of your village know you've taken a day off ?"

We have device that learns spam numbers and blocks them (including entire county and area codes)

LongGone wrote: ↑Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:52 pm We have device that learns spam numbers and blocks them (including entire county and area codes)

My understanding is that these spam companies have phone diallers which give themselves random numbers, call and if someone answers puts a computer tape or human on the line but if no human operator is available the victim hears nothing

From time to time I will 1471 the caller's number and google it. On a couple of occasions when it was not a "Google known" number I have actually called it back. The lady telephonist at Irvine Police Station was most pleasant despite me being the umpteenth caller but a large London based company was a little fed up with the call backs! I can block about 20 numbers out of the thousands on UK telephone abusers lists on the internet

Some such companies withold their numbers so I arranged with the telephone company to block all "number witheld" calls. Big problems on the several ungent occasions when members of the NHS needed to speak to us - the NHS also witholds numbers.

I was telephoned by a "man from the insurers" who was making sure that I had recovered all my losses from the accident.

On questioning he couldn't tell me when the accident was but it was "within the last three years". Complete bollards.

He eventually put the phone down on me after we had had a whistle-stop tour of personal injury law. He never called back.

Re phone scammers, the last one I got on my mobile, a lad with a Mancunian accent, I strung him along as I had nothing better to do walking to the shops, and I thought of his phone bill and wasted time as he told me about my phantom accident. Should I get such a call on my landline, I fully intend to string them along then affect to put them on hold before saying as if across the room something like 'Sarge, I've got a trace on the line, can you let Ops know." or "Right, that's the trace sorted, that's enough for us to get the FBI in".

There nothing to stop anyone hanging up straight away, or answering (in my case) in Portuguese and taking it from there.

I like to string them along when they call by telling them one of my "injuries" caused severe amnesia. They usually twig after the 3rd or 4th mention of amnesia and hang up but one bloke was either very persistent or stupid (or both) and called me back at my request a few days later. I think he lost patience when I began to have the exact same conversation with him again. Did I mention I have amnesia?

J.R. wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:21 pm The ony one I remember was in the court room corridor. Always dark and musty with a distintive smell of despair and overshadowed by that shark attack picture which didn't help much either..

1d coins, if memory serves.

That's the only one I remember too. I think all payphones took sixpences too, maybe shillings. But all my calls home were 'reverse charge'. When I was a grecian I made them during prep. No queue, and evening calls were cheaper.