I was saying the other week that my new hearing aids had come with a warning not to swallow their batteries, because this could be bad for you. I doubt if anyone would choose to swallow a battery, but such warnings against barely conceivable eventualities are now commonplace. Manufacturers rack their brains to think of new perils to which buyers of their products could theoretically be exposed. Sometimes these warnings make no sense. I will not distress you with details of the colonoscopy I endured last week (all fine, just one little benign polyp), but the packets of laxative powder designed to empty the bowels prior to this humiliating procedure were labelled ‘Keep out of reach and sight of children’. Out of reach, yes. But out of sight? What’s scary about the sight of a packet of powder?
Last weekend I went to the old-fashioned butcher in Towcester to buy a chicken for Sunday lunch, and affixed to its wrapping was a note saying ‘Cook before eating’.
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