I drive along the city’s arterial roads. I see nail parlours, pound shops, chicken disposal units, mobile phone unblockers, and then I see balloons – a blossoming of red and yellow fluttering from the crash barriers and lamp posts. This means there is a flooring shop.

I’m not sure why they do this. Is it that these dismal smears of retail culture aren’t depressing enough without somehow adding the extra poignancy of festive balloons. Sometimes it’s not balloons, sometimes it’s one of those big, disturbing half-man, half-windsock creatures who jerk erratically and sometimes collapse on the pavement in front of you making you yelp and feel foolish.

I suppose it’s easy to understand the logic – people see balloons as signifiers of fun, they walk trance like towards them, they discover it’s a flooring shop, they feel no crushing disappointment but instead are filled with an overwhelming desire to buy strips of plastic with photographs of wood stuck to them and then glue them to the floors of their houses. The shopkeeper smiles.