The future doesn't look red for phone boxes, or even rosy. It looks black. BT has plans to remove 9,000 of them that have long since stopped making money. But the problem is not that people hardly use them any more for making phone calls. It is that neither BT nor its customers have bothered to think outside the box and reimagine them as strategically located, multi-purpose, public interest booths.

BT has said it will listen kindly to communities that want to keep their boxes even if the phones inside don't cover cleaning costs. This is good. The 1925 K2 model and its successors, designed by the architect of Battersea power station, bespeaks the same surplus solidity and permanence. Its teak door can keep out an October gale. Its livery, bright but not toxic, offsets the stonier tones of a thousand postcard pubs. It is an icon; heritage in Portaloo-sized chunks. But just because it has ceded the conversation-hosting trade to mobiles doesn't make it useless.

Some people do still make calls from boxes. Many are elderly. They deserve a misericord (a foldaway hinged seat) to help them to talk longer without tiring. Discerning mobile users find calm and shelter in phone boxes. They deserve charging points. Many of those campaigning to keep their boxes are doing the same for their local post offices. So install stamp machines in phone boxes, but also racks for application forms for passports, tax discs and E111s.

There would - just - be room left over for an umbrella stand, to be filled periodically by a local sponsor who would also take responsibility for cleaning. Box all that up and you have more than the fabric of society. You have its glue.