A meaningful conversation

This morning, Keith and I had a conversation which we have never had before. Before anyone's imagination begins to race, it was about football, or more specifically, about the apparently disappointing result of last night's match. Regular readers will be well aware of my attitude towards football and will no doubt gasp in astonishment and step back in amazement, and these reactions would be particularly appropriate when they learn that Keith not only  shares my degree of interest in football, but his antipathy could even be said to surpass mine.
Anyway, having seen clips of Wayne Rooney's succinct and direct reaction to being booed by the fans and Fabio's apparent bemusement and total lack of histrionics as he made his way 'backstage'  (sorry but I'm not conversant with the correct terminology here), we began to jointly wonder why anyone would be surprised that Fabio was not upset by England's performance as he is Italian, not English. I said I thought that the fact that he is raking in five million pounds per annum should be reason enough for him to show a little concern and interest, but Keith was adamant. He's Italian, so he will be rooting for the Italian team. Actually, we weren't sure if Italy is playing, but assumed they are. This in turn led us to speculate on why in the name of sanity so many of the managers and owners of the British teams are quite obviously not British and, come to that, neither are a large proportion of the players. Does the UK produce so few decent players that it is impossible to cobble together at least a few teams using solely British players?
By this time, Paddy was fixing me with the doggy glare that means, 'Are we ever going for a walk today?' so that was the end of our conversation, except to bemoan the fact that there are still a lot of 'World Cup' days to get through before I can be sure of seeing Emmerdale and Coronation Street at the proper times again.
Oh, and if anyone thinks they can answer our queries, please feel free to use the comments box - but no hate mail, please!

Text messages

When I take Paddy out for a walk, I wear trousers, jogging bottoms, whatever, but they have to have deep pockets. This is so that I can carry tissues, treats for the times when Paddy actually manages to walk past another dog without having an attack of hysterics, poo bags (self-explanatory) and my two mobile phones, one being my personal one for use in case I am suddenly attacked by a manic axe murderer (well, you never know) and the other being my 'work' phone. When the message tone on that one beeps, I can be fairly sure it will be from a client wanting to cancel an appointment or having forgotten the time of said appointment, but today, it was different.
The message read, "Hi, how are u. Wot u up to this mornin?"
As no-one I know is that into textspeak, I could be fairly sure that this was not from a client, not even one who wanted an appointment at short notice, so I ignored it and carried on walking.
Minutes later, the phone beeped again.  "Where r u mate?"
I considered texting back to put the sender out of his misery by informing him that I was not his mate, but I didn't, at least, not until we got home when I sent a text saying, "I'm afraid you have the wrong number"
to which I got an immediate reply: "R u not rod then?"
"No" I replied. The novelty was wearing off by now.
"Who r u then?" was the next message.
I was tempted to reply "Not Rod" but decided against it. Surely if I ignored him, he would finally get the message. How hard can "I'm afraid you have the wrong number" be to understand?
But no, our friend was not ready to give up yet.
"R u a lady?"
Yessss! Recognition at last!

My present

Back in November, my friend Gill, she of 'ladies who lunch in Chester' fame, gave me a little cyclamen plant. Here it is in the kitchen. It looked just like this when she gave it to me and we both thought that the flowers would last a few weeks at most and then, its job done, it would be sidelined.
But this little plant obviously had other ideas, for, not only is it flowering again now but it also flowered again in the middle of winter, which was very cheering as, looking beyond it out through the window, there was nothing but snow as far as the eye could see.
It probably helps that it is on the kitchen window sill, which means I remember to water it, but I think it has done very well. A present and a half!