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Climbing into the car, my kids castigate me: “You are so socially unaware!”

I’m being told off for chatting with a West Indian chap in the doorway of the grocers, while collecting the shopping.

“They were shoplifters,” my daughter growls at me.

“And how would I know that?” I ask, “He said he hadn’t seen me in ages and that seemed plausible because…”

“You’re so oblivious to your surroundings!”

“Because I used to hang about with these folk, twenty years ago, so…”

“They were talking to you to distract the shopkeeper,” she sighs.

“Yeah,” chips in our lad, “I saw the other guy swipe a drink into his pocket while you were having a nice chat.”

“You were an accessory to a crime,” hisses his sister.

“Well if you saw,” I tell them, “you should’ve let the manager know.”

“What, and have them follow us all the way home and probably stab us to death. No thanks!”

“Well that would be a long walk,” I quip, thinking of the forty-minute drive ahead of us.

“They’re probably part of a gang,” says our eldest, shaking her head at me.

“Or, just some bloke I used to know,” I mutter.

I recall how a bunch of us used to meet for tea just a few doors down from here on Sunday mornings. Though, of course, I know it’s not the chap I remember. Still, I used to mix with all sorts at the local mosque, just a five minute walk away. Whenever I come back here, some old friend inevitably approaches me with the exact same words he did: “Wow, I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“They were shoplifters!” cry my kids, in the rarest display of unity ever seen.

Naturally, as their mum gets in the car, they must recount the whole tale back to her, in detail I can’t imagine truly captures the ten second exchange we had back then, as I collected bags to load into the car.

But fear not, this is just the prelude to the journey home, during which our children will insist on lecturing us on all of our shortcomings, including our old fashioned mindset on the pursuit of a professional career.

I whisper something about us adults knowing just a little about life, given the struggles of the past quarter of a century. But of course our kids now have an answer to that.

“YOU just had a nice friendly CHAT with a shoplifter!” laughs the eldest from the back. And that tells them everything they need to know about the wisdom of their old man.