Britain's iconic red phone boxes have become obsolete² in the age of the mobile -- but villages across the country are stepping in to save them, with creative flair³.

在如今的移动通讯时代，英国标志性的红色电话亭已渐渐过时，但英国各地的小镇居民正发挥他们的聪明才智来保卫这些“红盒子”。

An image of Britain's red phone box. 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（电话亭，报摊） have been given a new lease of life（重生，精神焕发） by local communities determined⁴ to preserve a quintessential（精髓的） part of British life.

In Waterperry, a small village near Oxford⁵, the 120 residents have filled the phone box next to the old manor⁶ house（庄园主的住宅） with a pot of hyacinths（风信子，红钻石） , piles of gardening and cooking magazines, and plastered（涂得厚厚的，醉醺醺的） 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 uproar⁷（骚动，喧嚣） 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（化妆美容，大转变） , said "quite a few（不少，相当多） people" would have joined her, adding: "We couldn't let it go because it's a landmark⁸, it's part of our heritage（遗产，传统） .

"We need to keep it here, it's an iconic thing, a British icon¹."

Only three feet by three feet wide, and standing⁹ eight foot three inches tall, the kiosks were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1936 for the 25th anniversary of the reign¹⁰ 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（背景） 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.