Golden rule number one...never, ever do anything that matters the day after a beer festival. I broke this primary rule last weekend after the Friday night extravaganza in Gosport, and boy did I pay heavily. Waking up Saturday morning suffering immensely from a head filled with exploding grenades, I immediately began to regret my previous evenings decision to launch straight into the strong ales. In the back of the shattered remnants of my mind I had a vague recollection of promising myself this day to fix the leaky washers on my kitchen and bathroom taps. So after the regulation 4 coffees and a side dish of Neurofens, I trooped off to the hardware shop to purchase the offending items. Armed to the teeth with plumbing tools, and still nursing an extremely delicate bonce, I proceeded to.. v e r y... s l o w l y go through the motions of drip repairs. You know the drill...turn off water at the mains, into kitchen, undo tap, replace washer, rebuild tap, turn on water at mains, try out kitchen tap. Excellent...drip eradicated. Right, another 2 cups of coffee, now for the bathroom one. Repeat the drill after me...into bathroom, undo tap.........what have I just forgot??? Yep, you've got it, never turned the water off at the mains again. Whoo-hoo, one swing of my spanner and a 6 foot spout of mains pressure water blew the tap right out of my hands. Oh my God!!! Now what? I'm standing there like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, wondering what the hell to do. The bathroom ceiling was now saturated, and I was soaked to the skin. Everything within a 6 foot radius was dripping, including all the carpets. In desperation, I racked my scrambled brains for a solution to the ridiculous situation I'd just got myself into. The only other living thing within hailing distance of my disaster area was Sammy, the cat. Fat lot of use he was. That's his pocket money stopped for a week. Nothing for it but to try and tie a bath towel around the roaring geyser, then tear downstairs in a frenzied effort to cut the flow. Before I'd managed to stem the tidal wave, enough water had escaped to keep the bathroom damp for a week. The pounding in my head had now reached gargantuan proportions. Only one thing to do in a scenario like this...go back to bed, sleep it off, and sort the mess out later. And that, folks, is exactly what I did.