I was trying to engage people in conversation.
Well, as for trying to engage people in conversation, you're doing a bang up job there. Sterling!
How about those rag and bone men, then? Aren't they something? Perhaps an appallingly inane topic of conversation, but we can't all be masters of waxing lyrical, can we? Gee I wonder why they call it waxing lyrical...I wish there was some huge repository of information with a convenient search function to help me locate what I'm wondering about quickly and easily....