Once directions to visitors, or people making deliveries, would have included the church, the pub, the shop, the school, the garage, the post office.

But in Alpheton, like so many small villages, the church apart, they are all long gone. Private houses every one of them. And in other, larger, villages and towns many are now falling into the endangered species category.
The red box just down the road from us, a guide for first-time visitors, is one of those under threat of extinction. And I'm glad to say that we are not alone in objecting to that.

True, we haven't used the box very often in the time we've lived in the village, except mainly to report the failure of our land-line.
BT says people use mobiles to do that. Yes, but. Not everyone regards the ubiquitous mobile as an object of desire or necessity... although closing the boxes is one way of forcing the hands of the refuseniks.
And getting a signal on the mobile can be something of a challenge, whichever part of the UK you happen to be in. Not a problem with the telephone box.

True, the box probably isn't used as often as a profit-driven organisation would wish. But I do see it being used often enough to suggest that cutting it off would be a backward, socially irresponsible step.

Although I doubt that cuts any ice with those fixated on little other than the bottom line.

YOU can't beat waking up in the morning to the smell of fresh-baked bread. We've been making our own wholemeal loaves for the last few years. Not the traditional method I hasten to add. We've got a breadmaker.

As I'm the one who eats most of the bread, I'm the one who makes most of it. The instructions are supposed to be idiot-proof.
But, unless I cheat and put in a generous helping of strong white bread flour, my loaves rarely rise properly. They either resemble a ski slope, have a flat top, or appear to be unleavened. A recent effort was greeted with the comment "call that a loaf?"

On the rare occasions Judy makes it, inevitably, the loaf turns out just perfect. Uniform shape with a golden, rounded crust, the sort that – properly handmade – would win prizes at village shows.

I console myself with the fact that it doesn't taste any better…