My wife and I were enjoying a coffee in York and were in a state of contentment discussing Thomas More’s Utopia and whether some aspects of his ideal state could be seen by others to be dystopian, when a young lady sat down with us. Incredibly, instead of joining in the symposium and proffering her own thoughts on the matter, she opened her laptop, put a wedge of white plastic into her ear and began to relay brayingly to a friend that she was having a coffee.

Sadly, this resulted in my train of thought becoming derailed just as I was about to say something profound about the dystopic effects of social media.

Brian McCusker, Hartoft Street, York