It is just after 5pm and I am nursing a cup of Earl Grey tea in the hangar-like Sainsbury’s supermarket at Fulham Wharf in west London.

We are around a dozen customers in the megastore’s café as the autumn evening draws in, and most of us are on our own. None looks likely to be getting better acquainted anytime soon, I decide, as Tracy Thorn’s melancholy tones echo out of the fuzzy PA system. But the supermarket would like us to — it has launched an experiment, Talking Tables, to tempt shoppers into conversation. At some, the mental health charity Mind is in charge, at others staff play host. But at some, like this one, it’s left to spontaneous interaction.

Despite placing the special sign (“Reserved for customers in the mood for a chat”) prominently, I get no takers. But the initiative is intriguing, partly because, as high streets across the UK continue their rapid decline, the big retailers are struggling to strengthen their community role, anxious to be seen as part of the solution rather than the problem. Meanwhile, think-tank papers and government announcements tell us that Britons of all ages are suffering an epidemic of loneliness.