In our local department store today, I was looking at the autumn collection of clothes. A young sales assistant in her twenties stepped forward to help me when she saw me studying a particular pair of wool trousers. I asked her if they were washable.

‘I wouldn’t know’, she replied. ‘I’ve never washed any clothes. My mummy still does all my washing for me.’  ‘Seriously?’ I said. She looked demurely downwards. ‘Yes, it’s a disgrace, isn’t it?’, she said with a charming smile.

At this moment I found the care label on the trousers. ‘Well, it seems you can hand-wash them’, I said. ‘How do you know that?’ said the assistant. ‘See here?’ I said. ‘This little symbol of a hand dipping into a tub. That shows you that you can wash the trousers by hand, but not in a machine.’ ‘Oh, does it?’ said this young clothes advisor politely.