This is a true story.
It happened just the other day.
My good friend Leo, who lives in my town but whose roots are in Gibraltar where his partner Lourdes lives (he visits her every month) sends her a loving text in Spanish every morning from Sussex.
The other morning, bleary eyed, he texted: "Buenos dias te quiero xxxxxx espero descansaras" which is just 'Good morning, I love you, hope you rested well." (Luckily nothing more personal than that!)
Only he didn't. Send it to her, that is. Instead he sent it to another close mutual friend of ours, Steve, who happens to catch a very early train from Brighton to East Croydon each day for his job as editor of a Travel Trade magazine.
So Steve got the message that Leo loved him bright and early. Although Steve does not speak fluent Spanish, he got the drift...and replied: "??? You throwing foreign lingo at me at 5.30 am!"
Explains Leo: "The reason for the mistake is that I communicate with Lourdes on Whatsapp which on the I-phone is a green panel with a white phone on it and with Steve on SMS Messages which is a green panel with a white speech bubble - so when I woke at 5.30 am to visit the loo, in my sleepy state I must have pressed Messages instead of Whatsapps. The last message I had sent was to Steve last Saturday so of course he received it instead."
Leo quickly proceeded to try to rectify matters, explaining : "Lourdes and I always exchange short romantic messages first thing in the morning. Today she had an early start. So it puzzled me when my phone pinged back at 6.02 am with the bewildered message from Steve. That's when I realised my mistake."
He then sent this message back to Steve: "Steve I do love you, though you'll be pleased to hear that I love Lourdes even more and I don't REALLY need to know how well you slept but please DO tell me if you like."
Leo said it was perhaps fortunate that the message hadn't gone to Steve's South African wife Renette or indeed my own Swedish wife Vivianne, who does understand Spanish - Leo does sometimes text them too, as we're all great friends. On this occasion all three lovely ladies were able to have a good laugh about it later. And Leo will doubtless take more care in future about who he texts love letters to.