Commentary, projects and musings from Rich Hill
Britain's red telephone boxes are no longer for ringing. They are for borrowing, resuscitating, browsing and caffeine. I spent a month visiting the tiny civic conversions that are quietly outliving the dial tone — and asked whether they are charming relics or a genuinely workable model.
One pad of writing paper, thirty second-class stamps and a month of walking to pillar boxes in all weathers. What came back — and the surprisingly practical case for putting pen to paper in 2026.
Forty-one benches, four weeks, and a lot of awkward eye contact. A personal experiment in sitting down on purpose — and what it reveals about who our towns expect to stop, rest and stay a while.
Lost cats, bin-day confusion, a planning row and one very persistent hedge: I spent a month in my local WhatsApp group to see what happens when a street tries to become its own news desk. The answer is useful, chaotic and occasionally in need of an editor.
Four weekends in surviving working men’s clubs, where a £3 pint, a meat raffle and a tribute act are not nostalgia but infrastructure. A warm look at the rooms that still matter in 2026 — and the closures, younger members and committee politics behind them.
For a month I photographed the noticeboards of corner shops, libraries and launderettes — missing cats, guitar lessons, parish council spats and all. The scruffy corkboard turns out to be a better model for community than most social platforms, and a useful reminder that online spaces could stand to be smaller, temporary and considerably less dramatic.
For a month I treated ordinary local buses as a cheap seat in the best travelling theatre in Britain — always upstairs, always at the front. What I saw was less about transport and more about how our towns actually work.
For thirty days in October 2026 I paid for everything in cash — buses, coffee, the weekly shop, even a parking meter that seemed personally offended by a twenty-pence piece. This is what the friction taught me about spending, access, and the shops that still count coins.
Every second Saturday, a village hall fills with faulty kettles, split seams and small electronics that have not quite died. I spent a month at my local repair café, learning which end of a screwdriver to hold and why mending things is secretly a social club.
Seven days with only local BBC radio, no national stations and no skipping. The week brought pothole phone-ins, farm reports, obituaries, traffic bulletins and a surprising amount of comfort. It was also a clear-eyed look at community, loneliness and what disappears when regional broadcasting shrinks in 2026.
Four Sundays, one muddy field and a thermos: I treated the local car boot sale as a proper field experiment. What I found was haggling as theatre, regulars with alliances, bizarre finds and a set of unwritten rules. In 2026, this gloriously unscripted Sunday ritual deserves to be treated as a British cultural institution.
A good pub quiz isn't a test — it's a room full of people arguing happily about the name of a dog from a 1990s advert. Here's how I'd run one in 2026 without turning it into a Google race.
Cinema hasn't lost its magic; it's lost its casualness. A cheap Saturday morning screening could be the easiest win in town — for families, night-shift workers and anyone who misses seeing a film without checking their bank balance.
For one week I stripped my personal site back to hand-written HTML, a hit counter and a guestbook that actually worked. It was meant to be a bit of nostalgia. It turned into the most useful audit of how I use the internet that I've done in years.
Tickets for under a tenner, a raffle with a meat voucher as the top prize, and a PA that came out of somebody's loft. Village halls and community centres are quietly putting on the most interesting nights out in Britain right now — and I think we should stop treating them like a last resort.
Streaming keeps chasing the next big thing, but the British panel show quietly does something better: it lets funny people be funny. Here's why the format deserves a proper 2026 revival — and which moments prove it still works.
I spent October 2026 watching only free UK streaming apps — BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5 and friends. Here's what I found, from buried gems to ad-break revelations, and whether free telly is secretly better than we admit.