This is going to sound improbable, so soon (a year) after I saw Liz Truss at a sixth-form open day, but I went round the clothes shop Hollister yesterday and saw Rachel Reeves embarked on the same pursuit: trying to exist in the world without embarrassing her daughter. The difference this time, apart from all those politics, is that I look a bit like Reeves – not uncannily, but enough that I went to a Halloween party as her one year. I didn’t even dress any particular way – I just brushed my hair and everyone knew who I was. Then I had to explain that the spooky part wasn’t “taxes”, but “third-way politics”.
I am older than the chancellor and have a resting doom-face, so the resemblance was never pronounced. But the worse things are going for the government and the economy, the more alike we look, to the extent that it’s become a really annoying running joke. Whenever there’s a problematic headwind that needs an announcement on the rolling news, my kid’s friend goes: “What’s your mum on about now?”
I said “Hello”, and in absolutely no circumstances was I intending to continue in any direction. I was not going to engage her in debate about her intentions with regards to the Green New Deal, and I was not going to tell her about the fancy dress party. I was not going to complicatedly recognise her service to the nation, in a way that underscored I disagreed with almost everything, yet at the same time would hate to do it myself. I wasn’t going to try to engage her in solidarity about walking round the shops with a teenager.
It’s somewhere between a reflex and a rule: if you see someone more than once, it’s for a reason. It’s because they live on your street, or they’re your regular bus driver, or they’re a policeman tailing you, or you actually know them pretty well but aren’t wearing your glasses, or they’re famous and it’s pointless to pretend you don’t know that. It could be any of a thousand circumstances and, in all of them, a “Hello” is better than no “Hello”.
My daughter thought I was going to ask for a selfie. It’s possible Reeves also thought that. It’s apparently the most mortifying I have ever been, and the most embarrassing thing ever to happen.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
