Imagine for a moment that you are in your giant out-of-town local supermarket or mall. You know its layout well because you have been coming here to shop for years and you have found everything you need to buy for the next week in record time. The stately procession of you and your family with your piled-high trolley filled with your standard weekly shopping hasn’t been derailed by sudden excursions to unusual store aisles featuring new, highly advertised, impeccably branded luxury products, and the flow of fellow-shoppers is as logical as your own. Nobody u-turns to pick up the missed toothpaste or hesitates over the cheese counter, or drops a child off their trolley. You haven’t been seduced by any special offers, the children haven’t insisted on having the latest chocolate bar that is tied into

a blockbuster movie and your partner has resisted arguing over the merits of Chilean Merlot against German lager-you’ve bought both without friction. You haven’t been immersed by the vastness of the space and fallen into a kind of dream state of irrational purchasing, nor become so irritated that you have missed half the things you meant to buy.