I love to watch Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers and imagine some poor producer pep-talking him in the front of his Volvo: "Look Nigel, you've only got to make pleasantries with these organic beetroot growers for FIVE minutes tops.
I make pleasantries and avoid conflict with the people I have to interact with face-to-face.
This big, burly, friendly looking guy, with thinning red hair and a beard, doesn't bother to make time for pleasantries that don't involve his auto-shopping site.
Speeches have been made, songs sung, pleasantries exchanged, and now all you need to do is Google "What time does the George W. Bush Presidential Center open on Saturday?" to proceed with the next step in your lives.
"Have you got enough material for your article?" asks Lindsay Kemp, making an innocuous pleasantry sound somehow louche and debauched – one of his many skills.
Zelda smiled her beautiful smile and sweetly murmured a taunt of her Alabama school days, 'I hope you die in the marble ring,' — but not quite loud enough to be heard by the man, who thought she was making the usual pleasantry.
The sentiment behind Latham's #SaveAustraliaDay sounds attractive to many, probably because patriotic pleasantries like "a wonderful celebration of what makes Australia great" are easy to swallow.
When you must conjure up a war zone, an interrogation room or an imminence of terror in 10 minutes, it concentrates the mind, makes every chatty exchange seethe with menace, every vacuous pleasantry freighted with unspoken predation.
But the President's bipartisan pleasantries only made his firmness more impressive.
Calm down and smile and find time for the pleasantries that make other people feel valued.
