There is one thing that has turned the world into an almost unlivable cesspit of fear and tongue-tied terror; it is the fading glamour of speaking specious nonsense to complete strangers in public.
One can only blame the Nazis of political correctness for this, that detailed analysis of human behaviour from which it is decreed something inappropriate has occurred, almost always by a man.
We men like to compete, we like to take part, so for our hitherto harmless babbling at strangers in the guise of wit and friendliness to be seen now as harassment, feckless flirtation, and, dare I even go this low, chatting up, is almost more than I can bear.
But the tragedy of it is, this has literally cut allowable public-place conversation in half.
Mute frightened zombies everywhere.
In art galleries, you can hear a pin drop.
I have a filing cabinet in my man cave bursting at the seams with evidence and anecdotes on this very topic.
I could fill this page every day for the next 10 years with what that cabinet contains, but I won't, I will merely pluck one random incident from there.
Last Tuesday.
Mid-morning.
Fresh Choice supermarket.
Roslyn.
I was chasing a tin of Sealord Thai red chilli tuna, a delightful and arresting addition to instant noodles for an upcoming prestigious dinner party.
There by the canned fish stood a woman, half-singing and half-humming along to the muzak from the supermarket speakers.
It was an inspiring and utterly beautiful sound.
Her voice rose and fell like the tide on a Goa beach, rising ecstatically to meet the melody, and then subsiding in respectful awe when emotional restraint was required.
In the 1960s, I would have thought nothing of saying, ''You there, woman, I'll warrant you are the most gorgeous singer to have ever reached my ears.''
This would not have been empty frippery, an airy compliment, or, chatting up.
I am steeped in music.
I know a breathtaking coloratura when I hear one.
I would almost lean as far as to say Anna Leese in her finest moments in this most musical of cities has rarely sung better, though in fairness to Anna, she has not trained in supermarket muzak.
The woman, in the 1960s, would more than likely have replied, ''Thank you kind sir, I am warmed to my kidneys at your words.''
She might have hung her head shyly as I grabbed my tin of Thai red chilli tuna and moved away, never to be seen again.
Or I would have continued to be thunderously witty and we would have married shortly after and quickly produced 16 children, a small percentage of whom would later perform at the Winter Olympics.
That was the wonderful uncertainty of life in the 1960s, when talking to strangers was the meat and drink of our every waking hour.
But now it is 2014.
Were I not impossibly constrained by social convention, I would have said those same words I said above.
And, she would either have summoned the manager and had me banned from the supermarket for a year, or asked me glibly how long I had been chatting up women in supermarkets.
I would have reeled back as if stabbed by a long thin quill had her retort been the latter, but probably would have regained ground quickly by saying, after looking at my watch, ''About 70 seconds.''
There were no winners in this malevolent social incident.
My silence just ground my teeth down another 32nd of an inch, and I was angry for the rest of the day.
I could have written about this woman in a top-notch publication and put her on the map.
She could have finished up on New Zealand's Got Talent!
But no, she remains an undiscovered vocal colossus, and I continue to bemoan the savage decline of life as we know it.
Last Tuesday was of course the day Brendon McCullum reached 302, so I was not of a mind to take this thing any further.
But I am getting very very close.
Next time, I ...
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
