#telegraph pole

[kojiarakiartworks]

February JAPAN HOKKAIDO SAPPORO

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

[thunderstruck9]

Gertrude Abercrombie (American, 1909-1977), Wires Down, 1943. Oil on board, 7 15/16 x 10 1/16 in.

[shy-girl04]

Photographer - © shy-girl04 : Rooftops 2025

[haxanbroker]

Telegraph pole, February 2026.

[heart-limb-camera]

Foggy A5 commute.

[lostark1967]

telegraph pole

[scavengedluxury]

Resting birds, 1972. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

[gazillionmilesdowntherabbithole]

Channel your inner Rimmer — tomorrow (21st September) is Telegraph Pole Appreciation Day!

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me enormous satisfaction to announce that we are once again blessed with the annual Telegraph Pole Appreciation Day. This noble celebration is the brainchild of the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society, mostly in the UK- but the poles of the world deserve our admiration too. Their founder, Martin Evans, even authored a definitive treatise, Telegraph Pole Appreciation for Beginners (buy it here or… obtain it by certain nefarious methods.. cough [here]… don’t tell anyone).

Consider, if you will, the words of Evans himself:

“This is the day when we finally look up and notice these tall, elegant and dignified keepers of the volts; be they telephone or electricity volts. All year long, and all weathers they perform their duty unflinching – holding aloft the wires carrying your telephone calls to your cousin who’s just got engaged; or keeping up the cables delivering the electricity that makes your slim-o-matic adjustable vibrating tv lounger work. All in a day’s work for a telegraph pole.“

Now, lesser beings might spend the 21st scrolling TikTok or engaging in other low-grade diversions, but not us. Oh no. Tomorrow we shall:

Hug a pole (with appropriate reverence).

Take a photograph of a pole (from its best side, naturally).

Compose poetry to a pole (Insulator by Martin Evans springs to mind).

Or even organize a one-person street party beneath your local pole, complete with bunting, butterfly cakes, and fizzy pop (preferably with a wasp in it, for tradition’s sake).

The society’s mantra says it all (but they know how to appreciate even the concrete ones)

“If it’s tall, wooden, sticky-uppy, and got wires coming out the top — then it gets appreciated.”

From the book (and surely destined to be carved onto stone tablets one day):

“In the beginning the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep. Then there was a long middle bit with hardly any telegraph poles at all until Michael Faraday came along to make some sparks with a coil of wire and this gave people ideas.“

And that’s how telegraph poles came to be. Frankly, Genesis would have been vastly improved if it had started like this.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll permit me — for no great occasion is complete without a recital — I should like to present one of greatest contributions to the canon of telegraph pole literature. A poem, naturally, on that most overlooked yet utterly vital component: the insulator. The poem is called - befittingly - Insulator, written by Martin Evans himself.

Were you listening

all those years

atop the pole

between big house and the exchange?

What might you have heard

as those long dead voices whispered by?

Stockmarket talk,

household gossip,

inevitable war.

Your eavesdrop over

the telegraph done.

Crackling whispers you once carried

now take the high road.

And your secrets safe on

a shelf in the collector's home.

So tomorrow, stand tall, polish your shoes, salute the horizon, and for once in your life, give due respect to the humble telegraph pole. Without them, we would still be savages shouting across valleys.