Phone box stories

I don't have a home phone at the moment, so whenever I need to make a phone call I have to traipse down to the nearest phone box, braving the various characters that tend to approach you when you are talking on the phone in a public place. The first character-encounter I had was when I was calling my mother in the early evening from a box in Henley Square. After I had spoken on the phone for something like an hour and a half, a youngish guy started lurking around. So I got off of the phone, apologised for taking so long, passed the phone over to him and then walked down to the dairy a few doors down (for chocolate, of course). I had to walk past the phone on the way back and he had just finished his conversation. It turned out that he had been body boarding near Henley Jetty and could see the phone box from the water and had waited for about three quarters of an hour in the water, waiting for me to get off the phone. Police officers had flashed lights at him so he had hidden under the jetty to wait. This made me feel bad... especially when teamed with the fact that there has been a number of great white shark attacks recently around this area and sharks feed at dusk... My second experience involved a different phone box by a Catholic church. Again I was talking to my mother, and she had just started telling me a story about her work mate who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. As she started to tell me a man pulled over a car and started lurking near the phone box. Mum finally got to a pause in the story and I asked the man if he was waiting for the phone. To which her replied "No, I'm standing here fishing" and then proceeded to rant about a rental car and needing to use the phone and how you were only "allowed" to use public phones for ten minutes. So, I hung up on mum and moved over... all the while being abused by a unwashed-smelling nutter, who accused me of gossiping about cocks when his rental car was overdue. God bless Adelaide. Third and final story involves me calling my family in the same phone box about my exciting news (it's worth the hype, trust me). As Andy was talking to his sister a man started lurking near the wall of the Catholic church. I asked him if he wanted to use the phone and we began chatting... and it turned out that he was from Mumbai and disliked Adelaide as much as we did. However, he heartily endorsed Mumbai and fed the desire to visit India that threatens to completely overwhelm...