I mentioned about a year ago that our local branch of Oddbins, a chain of wine and liquor stores, had closed. The shop has been vacant ever since, but a few days back some big posters appeared over the windows announcing the opening of a skin-care salon. (What that will entail I'm not sure, but I am sure that I will never go there.)
In the process of preparing the shopfront someone took down all the old Oddbins signs, and beneath them was this amazing "ghost" sign for some place called Bottlenecks.
I have tried to look online for information about Bottlenecks, to see how old that uncovered sign might be, but I can't find any record of it. Was it just a single shop? I'm guessing at some point it was purchased by Oddbins and absorbed into that larger chain.
Maybe this is a hint. I have never seen a British phone number written as seven digits. Usually they are eight digits with a three-digit area code in front, written like this: (xxx) xxxx xxxx. I'm not sure this is universally true across the country, but that's how it is in London.
And when's the last time you saw a phone that looked like that?
Side note: If you want to read something head-spinning, check out this Wikipedia article about the history of British phone numbers. I tried to glean some information that would date that sign, but I was quickly buried in an avalanche of minutiae. It was obviously written by someone who is obsessively interested in the mechanics of phone numbering.
I read enough to learn that there were two overhauls to the phone numbering system large enough to merit a public-relations campaign. There was PhONEday, in 1995, and there was the Big Number Change in 2000. Apparently that latter date is when certain parts of the country including London moved to eight-digit numbers.
If I had to guess, I'd say the sign goes back at least to the early '90s. It might even be significantly older. The typeface looks very '70s. Can any of my British readers shed some light on this?
We are having a breezy morning here, with the forecast calling for winds up to 35 mph. That's practically dead air compared to Northern Ireland and Scotland, which are expected to get gusts up to 100 mph. This is all part of Storm Éowyn, apparently. Before I went to bed last night I put all the patio plants on the ground to avoid a repeat of the Great Geranium Disaster of New Year's Day, and so far I've heard nothing crashing or smashing. Olga went out briefly when I first got up but she came back in as quickly as possible and returned to bed.
The font used for the Bottlenecks sign does indeed look very 1970s, or it could even be from the late 60s (it has a Yellow Submarine-ish feel about it, I think).
ReplyDeleteThings like that can intrigue me no end!
And while I do find the logic and administration behind something like phone numbers truly fascinating, I would not need all those minutiae, either - give me the most important facts, and I'm happy.
For my friends and family in Yorkshire, I can say that their landline numbers have a 5 digit area code, followed by a six digit number.
I'm old enough to remember answering the phone with " 289" and having a shared line with the only other property in the road with a phone!
ReplyDeleteNo idea when numbers changed but first two numbers went before the 289 so we were 40289 then two more before that and finally area code was 5 numbers and actual phone number became 6 numbers but that was pre 1992. London was different to rest of country - so I'm no help at all!