Every week my dad’s family would gather at an auntie’s house and argue about the best route to Ridley Road. They would drink tea and describe, with glee and not a flake of detail spared, the buses they’d each taken, and the madness of having started in the wrong place, always. Arguments about shortcuts and the benefits of the No 38 would roll around the table like pennies as whole weekends passed quite happily with absolutely nothing of worth or depth apparently being shared at all. Like a Monet, the fine art of small talk (an art that is under threat) is best viewed from a distance.

“I hate small talk,” is a phrase one hears regularly today. “I have no time for it,” boast introverts, swishily. It is classed as the very worst of the talks, the Garibaldi of the talks, the Home Alone 3, the Phoebe, the Ryanair, the Niall Horan of the talks. It is treated with a disdain usually reserved for Esther McVey by Lorraine Kelly. Small talk is commonly spoken of as shallow, as dull, a stain on the otherwise flawless shirt of our humanity. Christ, there are even apps to help you avoid it, as if small talk were a traffic accident that must be driven around. As Uber trial an option allowing customers to select “Quiet preferred” when they book a car, alerting their driver to their preference for “no small talk”, it’s time, I think, to plead its case.

The art of small talk has many disciplines. There is the small talk of bus routes among a family, their performances of being different yet the same played out in journeys across their shared corner of town. There is the small talk of a first date, where questions about the weather offer opportunities for strangers to relax into a shared language, one that will reveal staircases to climb down into deeper conversation later. There is the small talk of parties, a social lubricant comparable to a large icy drink. There is the smallest talk possible in Instagram comments – the daily validations of friends with fire symbols and hearts. All is valuable, all is essential.

Asking a stranger whether their mother really loved them is rude. Complimenting their shoes first is essential

But despite its lowly ranking in the communication charts, it’s far from a simple skill. Pictures from Trump’s recent visit showed him strolling with members of the royal family, their faces fixed in familiar “Lovely weather” smiles, leading the BBC to ask a communications expert for small talk tips. Keep to “safe topics” she said, “then move on to asking the person something about themselves, like how they are enjoying the day. That sometimes gives you a clue about the person… and can spark a conversation subject or common interest.” I love this. It reads like an emotions poster for children with autism, and yet it is incredibly helpful for awkward-identifying adults. Print it out! Laminate it! This is the stuff of life.

One benefit of the crippling gender norms we’re raised beneath is that advice like hers will seem obvious to many women, who are accustomed to speech designed not just to parlay information, but instead to make people feel more comfortable in a room. When we come to understand this, suddenly the acceptance that talk can be graded, from real to false, from important to trifling, appears quaint. Big talk, the kind that stops wars and builds bridges, is seen as valid, while small talk, that simply eases a day, is weak. Yet it’s the gentle stroking of interactions and new relationships, whether that of nervous people at a party or a doctor and their patient, that binds our social lives together.

Big and small talk coexists, often in the same half hour. I’ve been thinking recently about the conversations I had with new mothers on maternity leave, all of us grey-faced and hollow, and how it would swing in seconds from the difficulty of getting a buggy on the train to postpartum sex. The rhythms of small talk were like a lullaby. But, of course, I understand why so many loudly dread it, even aside from the idea that they’re too busy for such superficial communication.

I understand the feeling that in 2019 connection is rare, and important, and that small talk is seen as a threat to it, but unfortunately, bowling up to a stranger and asking whether their mother really loved them is rude. The foreplay of complimenting their shoes is essential. And I write as somebody who, interviewing celebrities in short hotel-room-sized slots, must ask about their sexual assault within four minutes of shaking hands. I write this, too, as somebody who shrivels at certain small talks, including, but not limited to, whether cream or jam goes on the scone first (answer: death) and a Netflix show that everyone agrees is “good”.

But even these hell-chats have a place in creating pockets of companionship, educating ourselves about how our fellow humans communicate, and so I lean into them, and ask questions about butter. Because as we continue to cleave from each other, finding new and ever grittier cracks of division, the small shared moments of weather, buses, telly and cake play an ever larger part.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman