Call of duty

This rural English village phone box was used fewer than 10 times in the whole of 2024-but Derek Harris sees it as a lifeline and is determined to save it.

- Emine Saner

THE BATTLEGROUND AT THE HEART of a struggle between an 89-year-old man and a multibillion-pound multinational is a small junction in a Norfolk village, where a red phone box stands. And at the red phone box, sheltering from the wind, is Derek Harris. In January, he learned that BT (formerly British Telecom) was threatening to close the phone box in the village of Sharrington, where he has lived for 50 years, when he saw it on the agenda of the parish council meeting. "I thought: 'I'd better do something about this," says Harris.

He has described it as a "David and Goliath" campaign.

It is that, and so much more. We will talk mortality and reprieves, heritage and value. I'll leave with a renewed sense of how it's possible to feel real affection for an inanimate object, and why having a mission matters.

First, though, some field mice. Sharrington is in a picturesque part of East Anglian countryside. "We're surrounded by open, rolling, wonderful fields - arable, beautiful," says Harris, "except they're inhabited by field mice - and field mice have developed a penchant for the PVC that protects the copper cabling [of phone lines]. Opposite the church, which is just up the road, there is a telegraph pole, and in it, there are three mice nesting." His eyes sparkle. The rodents gnawed through the wires, disrupting villagers' phone lines and internet. He knows about the mice, he says, because an engineer from Openreach, the BT-owned company that looks after the network, told him.