A few years ago I was at a friend's wedding when I noticed her 21-year-old cousin — let's call him Adam — deep in animated conversation with a great aunt from a distant branch of the family. I'd been stuck talking to this sweet old lady earlier, and we'd made polite chitchat about the weather, golf (her) and work (me). I had escaped on the pretext of getting another drink, and we were probably both relieved to see the back of each other.
But with Adam's arrival, the great aunt's table had become the rowdiest in the room. Curious, I walked over to find Adam showing off his Tinder profile. We sat there, the three of us, for a happy half hour, helping him decide which girls to swipe right on.
When I talk to older people, I find myself sticking to neutral subjects out of an innate desire not to shock them. Staying off Tinder and on the weather just seems more respectful. It's just the way things are: everyone speaks differently to their grandmother than to their friends.
Why, though? The way Adam was so relaxed with the great aunt made me think about the pointless barriers we put up between generations, and why we would all be better off getting rid of them. Whether we're 30 or 80, we've all had pretty similar lives, and we should stop pretending it's any other way.
This separation between the generations is a very British thing, and I didn't realise how strange it was until I moved to Turkey and began covering the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for this newspaper.