S is for St. Helena Island, South Atlantic.

I dial, the phone rings and is finally answered, my coins, British one pounds, the Queen on one side, drop noisily into the phone box safe. “Hiya, it’s me”. Pause, whilst they search to place the voice, I’ve only been away about two weeks I think, then they remember me, glad to hear from me, “oh hiiuh, where are you ?” comes the answer. Pause.

I look around. I’m in the usual type of red British telephone box, smell of stale piss and cigarettes. Outside the phone box are some houses, humble homes, some cars and kids playthings, a grassy area. Nearby an old jalopy car like something out of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and beside it a few of my colleagues, also looking like they’ve come from ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. They’re eating the local food that I’d just finished, but I forget what it tasted of and how it was called.

An hour or two ago I was at sea, cruising the high seas, looking for illegal tuna fishing boats, then we saw land, and our Captain turned the ship in. We slowed the engines, inching in and dropping anchor. We radio’ed in and came ashore. The ship’s inflatables brought us to where a welcome committee had already formed. An old jalopy had come round the corner and the woman jumped out. I seem to remember she had big hair. For a few pounds each she’d load us into her open-top jalopy and drive us round the island she said, give us lunch. Seemed like a deal. Not like there seemed many others ways to see round the island. We were only allowed ashore for a couple of hours maximum, a brief stop over, unscheduled and nothing to do with out itinery, but never let that stop a Swiss ship captain from seeing land.

So jump into the jalopy some of us did and off we went, up to the Governor’s mansion to see the old and giant tortoises, round some more leafy lanes, viewpoint here, viewpoint there. Green I remember, lush. Houses almost surrounded, eaten, by vegetation, things lying discarded in the yard. You could feel the dampness, smell the rot. The museum (the island’s most famous attraction) was closed, it was a Saturday afternoon, and the doors had shut at noon. They told us “if we’d known you were coming we would have stayed open”. It struck me as strange, we were visitors, rare visitors, in this out of the way island, could they not have opened up again ? Made some money ? Couldn’t they have been entrepeneurial like the Jalopy Woman? Seemed strange, I always remember that answer, “if we’d known you were coming we would have stayed open”.

In a while I’d go on to see and climb Jacob’s Ladder stairs down in Jamestown. I’d peruse with colleagues the shops looking for a souvenir to buy. There were some small wooden badly carved looking-nothing-like-him busts of a Frenchman. Outside in the street we meet a colleague and he has a 50pence note. He tells us it is legal tender. Excellent we think and off we go to the post office, giving them our coins in exchange for crisp 50 pence notes. The perfect souvenir. The expression “he’s as bent as a ten-bob note” would never be the same again.

But for now I’m in the phone box, British in look, British in smell. I glance through another pane of scratched glass, there’s bushes and vegetation outside, a wooden fence and behind it, barely visible from where I am, a wooden house known as Longwood. I hold the phone tight between my neck and shoulder, feeding coins into the phone which rapidly eats them, they clunk through buying me more time, I answer, shouting like it will make a difference, “in a phonebox outside Napoleon’s house, on St. Helena island”.