Whatever you do, don't forget to 'Always read the label'!

Pay attention class: there are good reasons you are told to 'always read the label’ and here is a little lesson as to the problems you could inflict upon yourself by failing to heed such warning.

My Irish-born wife loves running water – other than rain or a plumbing leak; so I commissioned a water feature for our back yard. There is an impressive gush of water cascading down the rocks, running downhill over pebbles before disappearing into the ground 20 yards down the yard – if you can make sense of that.

The flow over the stones creates a beautiful melodic sound, which is intended to soothe a wife. The feature isn’t perfect. The man who designed it has the stream flowing away from the house and out of sight of the window Mrs Youcantbeserious looks out as she commands her post at the kitchen sink.

But she does enjoy a full view of the fall of the water on the rockery.
The fast-flowing stream is so realistic that it might be mistaken for a tributary of the river Deel, but the truth is that the constant flow is recycled water.

There is a secret underground tank and an electric pump driving the water back up to rerun its journey from the wall of rocks. These same rocks and pebbles get discoloured over time, but the man who installed the whole shebang gave me a simple tip on how to alleviate this potential problem.

'Throw a gallon of bleach into the water,’ he said. 'Do it once a year and you’ll never have a bit of bother,’ he assured me. I like easy idiot-proof instructions like that and the beauty of the expert advice is that it worked splendidly… well until the most recent exercise, that is.

I skedaddled into the shop where I had previously purchased the gallon cans of bleach. A young assistant went searching and after a long time he returned to say that the gallon cans appeared to be out of stock, but that he found a couple of litre containers 'of the stuff’.

'No problem,’ sez I; 'same thing, so I’ll take those two bottles of it.’
The bottles were made of blue plastic I noticed, whereas the previous cans of bleach had clear plastic – but who was I to fussily question such insignificant detail.

The wintry sun was starting its descent into the west when I decided to do the job: in reality it wasn’t a job at all, as all I had to do was pour the liquid into the moving stream of water. I broke the seal and started to spill. I should have copped on at this stage, because I know the smell of bleach and I wasn’t getting it.

The liquid was thick, oily, concentrated and sort of soapy. I never know when to quit; 'in for a penny – in for a pound’ - so I off-loaded the second bottle.
I looked behind me at the rockery where the first of the mix was returning from underground. A gigantic mountain of thick white foam was growing by the second and had already engulfed the water feature. The stream was now an unruly mass of great white blobs, and rising at the rate of a foot every 10 seconds.

As soon as the great white horses reached a height of a couple of metres, a gust of wind took the top away and deposited lumps of foam down the field – which by now resembled an intensively stocked sheep farm.

Luckily Mrs Youcantbeserious was AWOL – as I stumbled into the house and turned off the power and therefore the flow of water. But the foam held firm. I got the hose to see if I might disperse the white mountains; but you might as well be trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol.

Next I decided to block the pipe taking the flow back to the tank and turn on the water again, then all the suds would flow out the yard and eventually be replaced by clear water in the tank – or so I thought. It didn’t work: I got the leaf-blower on and tried to blow away the thick wall of foam.

The agitation from the blower drove it mad and it continued to multiply. But now the fresh water was getting through and soon I had an additional problem: bubbles in all the magnificent colours of the rainbow!

The hills of creamy foam held firm, but the diluted mix was creating the most spectacular bubble demonstration you ever did see.

The bubbles began to drift upwards and onwards as avalanches of the white mess slid down and across the yard. Now the brother’s yard next door was raining bubbles. His two dogs were going mad, circling around on their hind legs and savaging bubbles right, left and centre.

The substance got into their eyes, temporally blinding them, and the barks turned to howls as they couldn’t be kept out of the electric fence and every other dog in the neighbourhood took up the barking in sympathy.

Car stops at gate: 'What are you trying to burn in that new stove; there’s bubbles coming out the chimney,’ smirked my next door neighbour bar two. I told him where to go, but he quickly returned with a car load of children for the free show.

The brother is playing to the gallery and arrives over with a pipe and a carrot and says he wants to make a snowman. I am rather excitable and to my eternal shame I tell him what to do with the carrot - in front of the children belonging to next door neighbour bar two.

The blackbird which always bathed in the water near the fountain was now enjoying the luxury of its first bubble-bath, as the nose of a car appeared trough the Bracklyn blizzard: Mrs Youcantbeserious was home.
I beseeched the brother to take the rap but he was still smarting over the carrot and was having none of it.

Then, just like in the movies the rains came and the wise-cracking, sneering spectators that I had previously regarded as friendly neighbours had to disperse.

It took hours for the rain to dampen down and shrink the white cliffs of foam; the remnants of which were still there next morning. It took weeks before the stream was foam free and the fall free of bubbles.

Since then I’m such a nervous wreck that I wouldn’t open a sliced pan without putting on my glasses to make sure the label says 'bread’!

Don’t Forget
It’s a lot easier to make a mistake than to undo one.