The Mysterious And Shocking Tale Of Harsh Reality As Defined By The Vanish Oxy Action Incident.

So we're in Sainsbury's and I am perusing the shelves and shelves of washing powder when Harry says to me, "Mummy, are you looking for something to get your whites whiter than white?"

I look at him and I see his completely serious, so I say, "Sort of. I'm looking for something to get the grass marks and mud stains out of your once-white-now-gray school shirts."

"Well, what you need is this then," he says, and he confidently hands me a bottle of Vanish Oxy Action In-Wash. "It gets the stains out of everything."

"Does it now." I say to him. "Well then we'd better get it hadn't we?"

So we buy it, and we go home and I measure out my 100ml to add to the wash, and I rub the neat liquid into the stubborn stains and leave it for 10 minutes before I start the wash as well, exactly like it tells me to on the bottle.

And I do the wash.

Later on I'm talking to my Mum and I say to her, as I unload the washing, "Look at this. They're still as bad as ever and I washed everything on 60 degrees. Bollocks to Vanish Oxy Action."

And I hear Harry careering in from the other room. "Pardon?" He says.
"What do you mean?" I say.
"What did you just tell Grandma? He says.
"You mean I said Bollocks?" I say.
"Nooo", he says, "you told Grandma that the Vanish Oxy Action didn't work."

And he looks at me like I've just told the biggest lie in the world.

"But it didn't, Harry," I say. "Look." And I show him the still-stained school shirts.

And he looks at them, and he looks at me, and he is flabbergasted. Utterly lost for words.

"What's the matter?" I say.

He takes a shirt from the washing and looks at it, and then he shakes his head and says, "On the telly they said it did work, but it hasn't worked in our house."

"No." I say.

And he stands there for a minute trying to formulate his thoughts and then he finally says, "So that means that, that means that the telly advert people, well the telly advert people were just all telling really big lies!