A MOTHER is still typing a text messages several hours after the three dots indicating she was composing her reply first appeared.  

Yvonne, not her real name, began typing shortly after a message from her daughter saying ‘busy all wk, pop by Sat-Sun if you want?’ arrived, and apparently has not ceased to type since. 

Daughter Charlotte, not her real name, said: “It’s been four hours and she’s still typing. How? 

“I know she does it slowly, peering down through her bifocals, phone at arm’s length in one hand and tapping gingerly with one finger of the other, but still this must be running to a few thousand words. 

“And when the messages arrive they’re like modernist literature or the deranged ramblings of a terrorist manifesto. No punctuation, no spaces, no logical connections between sentences. 

“Once autocorrect gets involved, it’s like decoding the later works of James Joyce. One message reads ‘sour cow next door fried to Magnet which were binbags? with silver! gin o’clock!’ Make sense of that. 

“I’ve hoovered, done two hours work, eaten a full breakfast and she’s still on three dots. What can she be taking so long to say?” 

Yvonne, reply, when it eventually arrived, read ‘Ok’.