My day is destroyed – and it’s not yet 9am. Radio Four’s Today programme is gently closing with its usually amusing And Finally - but today it’s anything but. Instead, the three-minute item blasts out a warning to the rest of my life, telling me I’m in imminent danger. Of becoming consumed by overwhelming conformity.

The admonition arrives in the form of an interview with Ebs Burnough, the director of a new streaming documentary Jack Kerouac: The Beat of a Nation, based on the writer’s classic counterculture novel, On The Road. And the feature reminds of Kerouac’s crazy, hazy hedonistic, often nihilistic, adventures with his chums as they zigzagged across America.

And it’s a stark reminder of what my own world has become. OK, I was never a counter culturalist, but I did once jettison commitments and throw a light rucksack onto still growing shoulders to take off in search of adventure, to the kibbutz, to cross as many South American border lines as a year would allow for (some astonishingly dangerous), to seek fortune in often soulless Canada.

Nowadays, however excitement/danger comes in a much-reduced form; having that extra latte, knowing the cholesterol levels are creeping up faster than winter. Or opening the Waitrose vouchers on the phone in search of a lovely reduction on fresh salmon this week. Or taking the risk of using an unvetted internet company to buy a leather belt and later realising (on attempting a return) they have a........

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