If you accept the recurrent narrative – regurgitated without so much as a bated eyelid by everyone from office mates to cab drivers – summer out here lasts a mere 172,800 seconds; two days. Making my way home, by way of the ASDA superstore, it is not hard to accept that as fact, given there are scores of people milling about, or seated in the outdoor stalls the pubs on Castlegate – most notably Black Friars, Carltons and Sinatras – have managed to set up. The two recurring decimals are pints of golden brew and bare arms of all shapes and colours; the sun deigned to shine in all its glory today, and we its doting worshippers have come out to play.

At the store, I find myself stuck in a line which is only inching along slowly, even though it is a tad shorter than the others. When it is my turn, I find that the till keeper is not dressed in the normal green garb of the ASDA check out assistant, but rather in a pair of unofficial jeans and a t shirt. The cause of the delays soon come to light. It would appear that he is not someone who normally mans the tills, he has to receive guidance from the attendant in the booth next to his from time to time – a much younger kid than he is by all accounts. Shopping done and dusted, I leave wondering if I have just witnessed first hand the teething pains of re-skilling, or more likely the floor manager stepping in to help get the queue moving.

With time I am finding out that there is a certain method to the madness of banal conversation. Drilled down to the bare essentials it is largely about feigning just enough interest to appear engaged –  uhhms and ahhs inserted into the dialogue at the right times – whilst steering very well clear of any difficult subjects  that might break the thin veneer of enforced civility, the point being to ruffle as few feathers as possible. I suspect it is that acquired reflex that makes me – not entirely out of context – bring up the JayZ song, Hard Knock Life when our Friday afternoon office lunch time conversation segues into the far too serious territory of death, faith and the afterlife. It does achieve the intended effect as we are drawn from the brink of an entirely unnecessary conversation into the safer realms of an argument around who the credits for the line should go to. I eat humble pie in the end – blame my tv starved childhood- when wikipedia confirms that the refrain from what is universally accepted as JayZ’s seminal rap song – is actually a sample from Annie the Musical. So much for my pretensions to being cultured. The positives though are well taken – saved from the brink of another difficult conversation.