I’m sorry, I’ll spray that again ….. August 2007

You know the advert on telly where some fat bloke is spraying his fence while his wife and kids look on in complete apathy and he’s laughing and being generally quite pleased with himself that everything is so easy and at this rate he’ll have the whole fence finished in 10minutes?

I’m here to tell you it don’t quite work like that. I currently look like a twiglet while I write this, having been subjected to a number of factors including the wind, blowback and blocked nozzle syndrome. My patio looks like I have performed some ancient sacrificial ritual looking as it does like a whole bevvy of virgins have been slaughtered on the alter (well, patio table to be fair) as the strangely brown wood dye looks as though it may well be dried blood.

Now in hindsight, sacrificing a few virgins might not have been such a bad idea. I was under the foolish impression that this stuff did exactly as it says on the tin, although in this case it came in a plastic container but let’s not be pedantic.

I filled my pump, brought it up to pressure, aimed at the fence and pulled the trigger. Bad idea. Should have been obvious that the stuff was going to come out backwards – that’s the way my life goes so I should have known, to be honest. So a quick readjustment on the nozzle and were ready to go again. Although it did take me the best part of 15 minutes to hose down not only myself, but most of the back door and half the patio as well. At least I’ve got my leaky water butt to assist in such matters (did I tell you about my leaky butt? Perhaps later …)

Seemed to be going OK once I got the hang of it. Until it ran out halfway through a panel. So now I’ve got 6.5 panels a lovely dark brown, and 6 more a completely different colour. I could go to B&Q and get some more but it’s Sunday and I can’t be arsed.

I’m going to trim the hedge now. I may be some time ….