can you smell petrol?

i'd noticed a faint wiff of petrol in the shed for a couple of day's but just dismissed it, [we use petrol for cleaning parts and i just thought it might have been on a discarded rag], i'd decided to crack the sporty up and get some charge back into the battery, [our sparky, strange paul, confirmed that the battery optimisers that we all use in england at this time of year were a crock of shit and would eventually knacker your battery so i binned mine after replacing yet another battery on the boxer last year] i opened the up-and-over door and cracked up the sporty letting it warm-up on the choke before adjusting the tick-over screw in the big mikuni so it was running at a nice 'brisk' rate, at this point, my ma made an appearance from next door but one and we stood talking in the fading light of the bitterly cold, mid winter afternoon, after a few minutes i turned around to turn the tickover down and to my horror raw fuel was gushing down to form a puddle on the top of the timing case and smoking off the hot supertrapps! i immediately turned off the ignition, shut the pingle fuel tap and attempted to mop up the surplus fuel with a roll of shop paper, after the bike cooled down i removed the tank and found the problem, the fuel pipe had de-laminated and split, i couldn't believe it, i've used this fuel line on everything from chops to race bikes and never had any problems before, the only thing i can think is a combination of heat off the rocker boxes and the amount of ethanol in modern fuel being increased resulting in the fuel pipe rubber going brittle, close call, closer than a very close thing, just have a quick look at your own lines, could save you a world of pain......