Old mates

In the twenty years that I have been playing football I have come across some great characters and made lots of friends. Unfortunately the fact that I have had more clubs than Tiger Woods means that staying in regular touch can be hard. You know what it's like up at 7 with the kids, school run, training, coaching, athletics, dinner, homework etc its all go, I only just have time to argue with my wife before we sit down to relax about 9 p.m. So the thought of then making/receiving a long phone call can be a bit of a killer. Especially when you are allergic to phones calls like I am. My mates are used to my phone phobia excuses i.e. it fell in the bath, my son keeps losing it( that one lasted 4 years), the battery is dead, the signal is rubbish, I left it up North ( for 2 weeks ).
Imagine what I'm like with calls I don't recognise!!. In fact I have seriously considered sending it to friends abroad in the summer when I'm off, ringing with a foreign dialing tone would definately put people off and may buy me a couple of weeks of peace!. It's not that I'm anti-social I just don't like people!, only joking I love meeting people just not on the phone.
I once struck up a great friendship with a stockbroker who was anti phones while on hols in the Caribbean. Our respective girlfriends/wives were busy with the Hawaiian tropic. You know the one, eight hours already in the baking heat and if you step near them "Your blocking the sun, I'm in your shadow". So being restless anyway and having walked up the nearest mountain and nearly drowning 2 miles out to sea I crept away. Luckily for me I met this great bloke at the bar who ignored his phone as if it was poisonous, he introduced me to Gin and Tonic ( I've never looked back!)so most afternoons for us two were then taken care of!. We were also both safe in the knowledge that our partners were still welded to their towels, hooked up to a drip of factor -10 and committed as ever to their Sun God.
Whenever I go away with my mate Daryl and his family we have a great laugh when our wives rise up off the sun loungers to have a dip, in typical David Attenborough lingo " And here we have the female of the species venturing down to the watering hole, it's best not to approach at this stage as they can be extremely dangerous".
Anyway the there is a point to this story, phones can be used for speaking and not texting!. I actually phoned my mate Daryl back last night as he had left a message ( no answer from me again!) saying he needed my new address for Xmas cards etc. I was with Daryl at West brom and Northampton, our families have been away lots of times together and have had some great laughs, although our last holiday was this summer just gone, 2 weeks in a haunted villa in the middle of nowhere in torrential rain.... hilarious !!. We have been in caravans ( no comments please!), had trips to St Tropez, Pollensa and in fact most of Spain. It was great to catch up and talk about old times and stories, some of which I will talk about soon ( Yachts, David Dunn, bizarre circus acts, and fluorescent rain coats in Prague to name a few ) but for now I am going to have to go as I think the girls have destroyed the top floor of the house. Oh and while I have been writing this the home phone has rung 3 times and my mobile has rung twice, come on I've been busy!!.

CH