Extreme sports: cleaning the cooker

Reports are coming in about my brother-in-law's attempt to clean the oven today. The cooker is a new one, and is supposed to self clean if it is switched to 300 degrees and left on for several hours. Bro-in-law set this up, but began to worry about how hot it was getting, and prudently decided - in case the situation became critical - to make sure the kitchen fire extinguisher was working.

Unfortunately the extinguisher was not a multi-shot type. When bro-in-law squeezed the trigger the thing burst into life, instantly covering him and the kitchen in white powder and showing every sign of continuing to do so indefinitely. Bro-in-law managed to stagger into the garden and, after creating the effect of a spookily localised snowfall on the lawn, found that he could stem the flow by holding his thumb over the nozzle.

This is how his wife found him when she returned some time later; cold, caked in powder and heroically holding the extinguisher like a primed grenade. When she had stopped laughing he communicated the plan he had hatched in the time he had spent alone. Following instructions, she lifted the manhole cover over a long disused cesspit, and he dropped the extinguisher in. There was a final blizzard of powder, followed by a dull explosion.

Moral; if you can't stand the heat, spray out of the kitchen.....