Angela Gahagan-Thomson is talking to me about the collapse of high street retailers as the trend towards digitisation sees more people shop online. I imagine everyone sitting at home ordering groceries, socks or fridges via their smartphones, while shops board up, banks demolish their branches, and the only traffic on the road is delivery vans. I picture tumbleweed rolling through Sandton or dust storms howling down deserted Long Street.

Gahagan-Thomson laughs and tells me that’s melodramatic.