A few days ago, I was paying for a purchase, masked and ‘checked in’ as a good pandemic citizen. 

As I turned to leave a muffled comment from the guy behind the counter made me turn back.  

The result was two middle-aged men whose hearing isn’t what it used to be trying to communicate through facemasks and layers of Perspex.  

It turned out that my card hadn’t read properly, but what would normally have been a quick and light-hearted social interaction was made complex and fraught by the impediments that are now normal in routine social contacts.