16....

Continued.......


Dora and her sister Lillian were having elevenses in their favourite café. (It was only the favourite for that particular week....usually, just after they had declared a venue to be the absolute pinnacle of patisserie perfection, they started to notice faults. Like asymmetric scones. Or the wrong sort of jam. Or other customers.)

Lillian lifted the lid of the teapot and peered intently into the golden liquid , like a fortune teller gazing into her crystal ball.

'I see teabags.' she declared indignantly.

'What did you expect to find?' asked Dora. 'A tall dark stranger?'

'I really don't like teabags,' replied Lillian, wiping steam off her glasses, 'I'm more of a loose woman.'

Dora decided to less that one pass. She looked around the café, wondering when people had started dressing so casually. Surely that young man in the corner was in pyjamas? Then her critical gaze fell on a family sitting at a table near the door.

'Would you look at those three.' She nodded her head towards them. 'Mother texting, father on his i-thingy, and junior no doubt killing somebody on a games whatsit - all of them struck dumb by technology.' Lillian opened her mouth to reply, but Dora wasn't finished. 'Marta's exactly the same; permanently attached to her mobile phone. She's even looking for a man on the internet! '

'It's the way it is now, Dora. Social media, etc.'

'Social? In my day, social was a dance at the church hall. Or putting on your good clothes,' she turned her Medusa stare on the boy in the corner, 'visiting people, and actually talking to them, face to face.'

Lillian thought guiltily of Trevor, a chiropodist from Paisley, with whom she enjoyed a nightly bout of online Backgammon.....and then wondered if now was the time to tell Dora that she'd signed them both up to a charity speed dating event......