Old dog, new tricks

Met my 82 year old dad for a cup of mint tea in town today. He had just been to his acupuncture session. He has had a mobile phone for several years but it is rarely if ever that you can get through to him on it and rarer still that he calls you. He produced it in the cafe as he was telling me about the fact that he was checking his missed calls with someone who wanted to arrange a meeting with him! I was handed the phone where I found unviewed text messages from 2001. His call register included many recent calls to odd numbers that included asteriscs and hashes and that more often than not did not start with a zero. When I asked about the conversation with the missed call person he was indignant that he calls a number to ask about his missed calls.......he is never wring by the way.

When it came time to leave, we rose from the table and he set off with a paper bag with Chinese writing on it. "What's in there?" I asked. "My anti ageing pills", he said confidently.