The Red Box

Morgan was a man who was entirely comfortable with who he was and never toed the party line. He wasn’t a rebel or an eccentric. He was simply Morgan. He knew who he was long before life attempted to mould him.

At school, he had a small group of friends whose company he enjoyed. He never felt the pressure imposed on young people to achieve top grades, build impressive careers and follow the well-trodden path into employment. He consciously rejected the conventional route that seemed expected of everyone: career progression, pensions, marriage and eventually becoming just another national statistic. Morgan wanted to earn an honest living, but he wasn’t prepared to suffer for it.

After leaving college, he secured a job with a local accountancy firm. Before long, his mental health began to deteriorate. Sitting behind a desk all day felt profoundly unnatural to him. Anxiety crept in, followed by stress and persistent back pain. The company doctor recommended that he join a gym—for the modest fee of one hundred pounds a month—coincidentally owned by the doctor’s brother.

On the office wall hung a motivational sign:

“Work lots, spend lots and reap the benefits. Your quality of life depends upon your work ethic.”

Everyone else seemed to accept the message without question.

It did not sit well with Morgan.

Each day he watched colleagues hunched over their desks, frantically working through endless caseloads while managers urged them to produce even more. They were little more than means to an end for wealthy business owners, and Morgan found the entire arrangement uninspiring. The mortgage noose tightened around their necks with every passing year. The only times they seemed genuinely animated were when discussing their cars, all of which had been bought on finance. They proudly compared the latest electronic gadgets, nearly all purchased with credit cards. Their children had come to expect the same lifestyle.

Morgan refused to become another slave to the system.

He lived simply.

Over the years, he drifted into a handful of brief relationships with women who found him intriguing and quietly assumed they could change him. None of them succeeded. His parents repeatedly encouraged him to work harder, buy a house and settle down with a family, but none of it appealed to him.

Morgan did possess one unusual talent.

He could fall asleep standing up.

It was a gift that rarely proved useful, except during long train journeys.

So Morgan quietly went about his life, bothering no one, yet somehow being bothered by everyone. It seemed as though everyone wanted to be the person who finally transformed him. He was encouraged to apply for promotions, set up on blind dates and invited to every party imaginable. When he declined, people simply invited themselves to his modest flat instead.

No one disliked Morgan. On the contrary, he was an amiable fellow, and everyone genuinely believed they were acting in his best interests.

His parents shook their heads at what they perceived as his lack of ambition. They worried he was depressed, though nothing could have been further from the truth. They longed for grandchildren.

Morgan, meanwhile, suspected that the harder he worked, the more the government would simply take from him in taxes.

He had reached a very simple conclusion.

He just wanted to be left alone.

One evening, as Morgan walked home from work, he passed an old red telephone box that had long since been decommissioned but left standing for nostalgic reasons. On impulse, he stepped inside.

Immediately he felt something he hadn’t expected.

A sense of freedom.

A sense of security.

Where most people would have experienced claustrophobia and isolation, Morgan felt calm. The little red box seemed to shut out the noise of the modern world.

Over the following weeks, he found himself returning each evening. At first he stayed only a few minutes. Then half an hour. Then an hour. Eventually he remained until late into the night.

One evening he decided not to leave at all.

Thanks to his peculiar ability to sleep standing up, he enjoyed one of the most restful nights of his life. There were no distractions, no neighbours, no possessions demanding attention and no expectations. The simplicity appealed to him.

Beside the telephone box lay a small patch of unused ground. Morgan imagined growing vegetables there.

The idea refused to leave him.

The box stood on the edge of a small town where people worked hard yet somehow always seemed to be struggling. Most lived beyond their means. Money was perpetually tight, and, as Morgan had witnessed among his colleagues, debt had become a normal part of life.

Nobody paid him much attention. Those who noticed him assumed he was homeless. Driving past in expensive cars on their way back to large houses, they felt sorry for him.

Morgan found this quietly amusing.

He was there entirely by choice.

The longer he spent in the telephone box, the more determined he became to make it his home. He realised that he needed remarkably little to be content. With almost no expenses, a few pounds in his pocket seemed sufficient.

Eventually he handed in the notice on his flat.

For the first time in years, the slogan on the office wall no longer bothered him. In fact, he found himself trying to live by precisely the opposite philosophy.

He became happier.

He looked healthier.

He no longer dreaded each morning.

His enthusiasm for accountancy, however, began to disappear. His colleagues grew concerned, unable to imagine life without careers that financed lifestyles they could barely afford.

Morgan had only himself and his red box.

At work he listened as colleagues complained about mortgages, childcare costs and mounting household bills. They spoke as though they had no choice.

Morgan believed he had found one.

When he announced that he had found somewhere new to live, the entire office congratulated him. They imagined he had finally bought a respectable home and were delighted that he was, at last, becoming successful.

Morgan thanked them politely.

He didn’t have the heart to tell them where he was moving.

Friends, family and colleagues all offered to help him move.

Morgan thanked each of them but gave everyone the same reply.

“I’m only taking my slippers.”

He could hardly wait to settle into his new home.

Without rent, utility bills or endless possessions to maintain, food became his only real expense. He cleared the small patch of land beside the telephone box and began growing vegetables. Before long, tending his little plot became the happiest part of each day.

For the first time in his life, Morgan looked forward to tomorrow.

His plan gradually changed.

Instead of working to fund a lifestyle, he now worked simply to build a modest nest egg before leaving his job altogether.

His colleagues grew increasingly curious. They repeatedly asked if they could visit his new home, but Morgan apologised and explained that, unfortunately, he couldn’t accommodate guests.

His parents insisted on buying him basic household items.

“I appreciate it,” Morgan told them, “but I genuinely don’t have room.”

Life in the red box proved wonderfully uncomplicated.

He owned nothing.

He owed nothing.

His vegetable patch flourished. He built a simple wooden canopy beneath which he could sit, cook over a small fire and shelter from the rain. The arrangement was hardly luxurious, but Morgan had never been interested in luxury.

The locals continued to leave him alone.

Occasionally someone would bring him a hot meal, convinced they were helping a homeless man. Morgan accepted their kindness with gratitude, though he secretly smiled at the misunderstanding.

In his own mind, the telephone box had become a quiet act of rebellion against modern life.

From his unusual home, he watched people rush from one obligation to another. Neighbours stopped to talk. Some confessed they were close to losing their homes because they could no longer keep up with mortgage repayments. Others spoke of anxiety, exhaustion and debts that seemed to multiply faster than they could repay them.

Morgan listened.

He rarely offered advice.

Most people simply seemed relieved that someone was willing to hear them.

He watched marketing persuade perfectly content people that happiness lay one purchase away. He saw families trapped in cycles of borrowing to maintain lifestyles that had ceased to bring them any joy.

For the first time, Morgan wondered whether society itself had become addicted to consumption.

His own life had become almost absurdly inexpensive.

His vegetable patch produced more than he could eat, so he began selling the surplus at modest prices. The extra income comfortably covered his few remaining expenses.

Satisfied that he now needed very little to live on, Morgan resigned from the accountancy firm.

His former colleagues admired what they assumed was a remarkable entrepreneurial success story. They congratulated him on finally discovering his ambition.

Morgan smiled politely.

Only he understood that his definition of success involved fewer possessions, fewer responsibilities and a plentiful supply of fresh vegetables.

As the years passed, his little patch of land became accepted as part of the town. Having occupied it openly for so long, Morgan eventually acquired legal rights to remain there.

For the first time in his life, he felt completely vindicated.

He had escaped the race.

Or so he believed.

Freedom, however, came at a price.

One morning Morgan received a visit from the local council.

After politely explaining that he appeared to be living permanently in the telephone box, the officer informed him that he would now be liable for council tax.

Morgan disliked the idea, but decided it was a small price to pay for his independence.

He paid.

A few months later another letter arrived.

Because he was occupying public land, there were additional charges to consider.

Then came further correspondence concerning the small plot he had cultivated. There were fees, permits and assessments. Someone questioned whether he was running an unlicensed business by selling vegetables. Another department suggested he might require planning permission for the wooden canopy. Before long, every envelope seemed to contain another demand for payment.

Morgan grew increasingly frustrated.

He wasn’t living in a mansion.

He was living in a telephone box.

Yet somehow it was becoming remarkably expensive.

The final blow came when the owners of the telephone box itself claimed that he was occupying their property and demanded rent.

Soon afterwards he found himself facing penalties, administrative charges and fines for failing to comply with regulations he had never even known existed.

The system had found him again.

His savings disappeared.

Then they were gone.

For the first time since leaving the accountancy firm, Morgan lay awake at night worrying about money.

The anxiety returned.

So did the stress.

Reluctantly, he approached his former employer and asked whether his old job was still available.

It wasn’t.

Fortunately, another accountancy firm had a vacancy, although it was much farther away.

To reach it each morning, Morgan was forced to buy a car.

On finance.

The repayments were manageable, everyone assured him.

Morgan eventually found himself staring once more at the motivational sign hanging on the office wall.

“Work lots, spend lots and reap the benefits. Your quality of life depends upon your work ethic.”

This time he said nothing.

The telephone box and its little vegetable plot were eventually sold to a property developer.

Luxury apartments soon occupied the site.

Years later, Morgan rented one of them.

It overlooked the exact spot where his telephone box had once stood.

He married the estate agent who had sold the development. Together they had five children, a sizeable mortgage, two financed cars, a kitchen filled with gadgets they rarely used and just enough debt to ensure he couldn’t afford to stop working.

Every morning he drove to the office.

Every evening he drove home.

Sometimes, as he passed the framed motivational slogan on the wall, he caught himself wondering whether life had been happier when all he owned was a pair of slippers and a red telephone box.