The unseasonably warm weather brought out shoppers in summer attire. Without the autumn colours of the trees, it would have been easy to imagine it a day in mid-July. Among the short-sleeves and the tee-shirts, a middle-aged woman walked through the precinct deep in conversation on the mobile phone held firmly against her ear. Across the front of her black shirt in white letters there were the words, “Mrs Dave Grohl.”

Of course, it is possible that the wife of one of the world’s greatest rock stars could be walking …