I enjoy visiting the elderly in our community.

An hour in that front room can be genuinely dull. The same three stories, the clock ticking, tea you did not want, long pauses you keep wanting to fill.

Dullness is not a sign that it is failing. For somebody whose week contains two conversations, both of them with delivery drivers, a dull hour is the week's main event and gets replayed for days afterwards.

It is one of the few kinds of help where doing nothing well is the whole task. You are not fixing anything. You are being a second person in a room, which is the exact thing that has gone missing.