A major issue with a little tissue in the wash

AND now for some home domestic advice: never put black underpants in the washing machine with a white paper tissue.

I have a penchant for black underpants. They take the choice out of which to wear on a morning when you open the drawer and see nothing but black cotton. No hesitation over whether to don pink or blue or ones with slogans, or the Green Hulk, or a Superman emblem, or a Union Jack emblazoned upon them.

Who in their right mind would wear Superman underpants, anyway? All they do is encourage comparison. Even if the wearer is the only person who sees them, they would most likely instil a sense of under-achievement and disappointment when viewed in a full length bedroom mirror upon the body of a normal overweight chap with a belly overhang. Not exactly what Lois Lane would have had in mind when dating Clark Kent.

Which is why I have 18 pairs, at the last count, of hipster nether garments in snug black with a touch of Lycra. Of which, after the last wash, I now have seven pairs that look as if they have been embroidered with confetti. I put on a pair and thought, for a moment, I had slipped through a wormhole in time and just returned from a free love wedding in the Swinging 60s.

You know, the age where everyone took their clothes off at parties. (Oh. Was it just me, then?)

A severe brushing hasn’t worked. I tried vigorously waving them around my head in the bedroom, but stopped in case I attracted a rescue party. My wife was unmoved with my plight, despite being responsible for the tissue being in the machine in the first place, and I can’t complain too strongly because I don’t know how the thing works.

“Oh dear,” I said. “Someone left a tissue in with the wash.”

“Mmm?”

I think my complaint was noted, but I still have this irrational nagging fear at the back of my mind of what might happen if I am knocked down by a bus and taken to HRI in delirium and try to explain as my clothes are removed: “I’ve just got back from a party in the Swinging 60s.”

“Don’t you think you’re a bit old for that sort of thing?”

Who in their right mind would wear Superman underpants, anyway? All they do is encourage comparison