I was looking on the reverse side of a liquid soap container at school the other day (another fantastic entry on the way, then), a casual glance to see if any major spelling mistakes or syntax errors had made their way onto the label. What I was greeted with instead was a concise set of instructions:

Wet hands and massage liquid soap to a lather. Rinse hands and dry.

By my reckoning, the only people who really need instructions (to prevent it being used as nose-spray or eye-liner) are the very small people who are, ironically, not yet able to understand the idea behind reading.

I walked around the staff-room at school offering the soap to various members of staff, who, whilst offering mild interest in my finding, did not seem to share the same enthusiasm as I. It is true we are becoming a humourless race.

N.B. The soap came from the toilets at school; it wasn’t that I’d taken the soap from home to show my work colleagues.

N.B. I was referring to children when I wrote “very small people”, not midgets, who are as able readers as any other person.