Cake and Communicating

I have noticed that Rosie and I have much better quality time together in cafes or restaurants than we do at home. Doesn't matter if it's John Lewis restaurant or Morrison's Caff - she loves it. Florence was the same, and in the last few months before she went to school we practically lived there.

It was Morrison's today for Rosie. She sat quite happily and spooned up carrot cake all by herself in an expert fashion, and chuntered away about her capri sun. She also played with my little UHT milk pot and the spoon for ages, then started offering me a slurp of her drink then moving it away, which became a fabulous game.

Two old men were having a conversation at the next table, well more like a heated discussion actually, it went something like this:

Old Codger 1 - 'I'm telling yae, Fewtbal's not about sport these deyers (days), it's aboot enterteynement'
Old Codger 2 - 'Nah yer wrong. When yav pleyed in a professional teeeem like ah have, yah understand its al aboot technique'

Fascinating. I don't understand men at the best of times, old ones may as well have descended from another planet. They even speak with a slightly different version of mackem to younger men. What really gets me about older people though, both men and women, and I see this a lot at church, is that they aren't afraid to argue. Whereas we younger folk tend to pussyfoot around each other's feelings, they seem to almost invite conflict. Is that a generational shift, or a gradual onset of bloody mindedness that comes with old age? I await to find out over the next 40 years or so :-)