If you had real “pull” you could get Telecom Eireann" to put in the phone line in 18 months rather than the usual 24.
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The father was on the council in Callan and the river kept flooding so he was told he had to get the phone. He wasn’t too worried as everybody knew that the waiting list was shocking. He was disgusted when it arrived the following week. Rental free but he had to pay the bill.
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We had the only phone box in the area when I was a kid. Father had a pub/shop, sadly long gone.
It was the communications centre for miles around. I think the next phone box was maybe 4 miles away.
The place would be full of young lads and young ones making their weekend plans, setting up dates, farmers ringing the vet, mammies ringing the doctor and so on.
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Could ye tap it?
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Yeah. An art form.
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You’re being unfair to Albert here. Not everyone wanted a phone then either, as it represented another utility bill with the fixed cost/line rental element of £20 or whatever.
I’m on record here as vouching for Albert providing me with a phone within a 10 day turnaround. Just because you were voting for that useless fucker Jackie Fahey has given you the hump. 
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What was worse was that Jackie was a cousin
(We always had a phone )
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No, twas just the phone.
Only for those people important enough to have a “Phone” installed in the house. Think there was a 3 year waiting list for a Phone.
I remember in the 80s you’d answer the phone and say your number. Saying your name was not done really until caller asked. Then you’d say who are you looking for.
My aul lad was paranoid so we were ex directory which always disappointed me when new phone directory arrived.
Being on phone too long was like leaving immersion on.
I remember US relations “booking” a call to America from Connemara in mid 80s via a local operator.
The worst of all though was ringing a girl. Be ok if her mother or herself answered but her dad or brother answering was like being water boarded. You’d dread that ordeal.
Great days. The advent of the mobile phone and texting from 1996 (I still have same number that I got to pick with my house number and bus route so I’d remember it) was beginning of the end.
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The youth of today don’t know what they are missing. You’d be waiting for someone to answer phone praying it wasn’t the father or the brother. My own father never answered the phone because he claimed it was never for him, he got more calls than anyone else.
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Sweat dripping off you in case they got smart with you.
A pal of mine met Dara O’Briain at a dinner and told him a story that he borrowed for His show.
A girl arrives home on holiday from America with her new boyfriend. Heads home to Mullingar. Family all there for dinner to meet her and him. Sit down for dinner and phone rings. In those days phone was often out in hall near front door so the mother goes to answer it. She answers it and the rest of the family can hear her side of the
phone call
-
- yes they arrived back today
-
- delighted
-
- she did
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- two weeks
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- he came with her. A lovely lad.
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- not sure. A Vice President of something
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- as the ace of spades
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- calll up soon. Bye.
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“Sorry Mr Murphy, I’ve the wrong number” 
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The pain when someone interrupted you when you were dialing an number on the auld rotary phone and you forgot where you were and had start all over again. Even worse if you were dialing long distance.
The parents didn’t get one till about ‘88 or so. I was long gone by then. Prior to that if you wanted to call home, you’d call someone you knew who had the phone and arrange a time to call back later. They’d go up the road and let the involved parties know that “horriblecunt would be calling back at half four”, at which point they’d tip on up to the neighbour’s.
Calling from phone boxes often involved waiting in a line for your turn. It wasn’t unusual for some young wan or young fella to be chawing away forever and the people in line would get impatient and bang on the windows of the box and tell them to hurry the fuck up.
Especially nosey cunts would hang around phone boxes to listen to everyone’s conversations and news would travel fast, so you’d have to be careful enough if the topic of the call was of a “sensitive” nature.
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It was great back then if you forgot to ring somebody about a work issue, the number one excuse was “I couldn’t get through”. You genuinely couldn’t get through to Dublin half the time. And I’d have been ringing from a multinational company in the '80s.