La Triviata - Duncan's substantial bits and pieces

Here are some useless facts worked out with a pint or two and a calculator.

Last year we served over 400 different varieties of real ale, and sold 1.3 million pints of beer and lager. This would fill 10 large domestic swimming pools (30 ft long), or fill a single pint glass over 131 miles tall (including its head).

There has been a building at the Pant-yr-Ochain since medieval times, but by 1550 it was already one of the chief gentry houses of the area, bits of which were built using material looted from Holt castle. In 1615 the building was sold for £1,400, which was a huge amount of money.

The local church in Gresford has a Yew tree which is some 1,600 years old. Carlo, who works for us at the Glasfryn, ate some berries from this tree 30 years ago and was very poorly indeed - Yew tree berries are poisonous to humans (but birds love them).

Hazardous waist - click the pants to see Jerry’s tragic digit

Jerry Brunning, our former chairman, once severed the tendons of a finger when it got caught on the elastic of his underpants whilst tucking in his shirt, so joining that tragic rank of people who have been injured by their own underwear...

(Safety tip : Don’t tuck your shirt into your underpants...Ed)

Unusual jobs that some of our staff have done over the years......a glazier in Montreal....a bull semen salesman.....an electricity pylon painter....a jewellery saleswomen in the Bahamas....a mobile toilet deliverer...

Last year the Glasfryn sold 18,700 bottles of coke and diet coke. This number of bottles produced 18,700 bottle tops.

On a busy night in the Corn Mill, a waiter or waitress
will walk up 1,363 stairs, which is the equivalent
of a Welsh hill.

For each £1 a customer spends on a pint of beer,
15p (net) goes straight to Government as VAT.
28p goes to the suppliers
25p goes on staff wages and bonuses
8p goes towards the variable costs in the pub - electricity, laundry, phone etc
16p goes on rent, rates and depreciation, head office costs etc.
which leaves....... 8p profit.

And then there’s the tax on the 8p, which means that by the time it all pans out we have to sell 20 pints of beer to make enough net profit to buy a pint of beer.

The Corn Mill once got through 43 loo rolls in the ladies bog in a single weekend during Eisteddfod week. At, say, 10 sheets per person, and 380 sheets per roll, this works out at some 1,634 sittings over the two days. It is estimated that the gas produced would heat a small block of flats, in winter, for some 3 weeks.

If each sitting took on average, say, 4 minutes, a total of 109 lady-hours were spent enthroned.

Corn Mill Economy Tip no.234. Separate out the two-ply rolls into single ply, thereby doubling the number of loo rolls, or halving the cost.

The oldest site we have is the Corn Mill in Llangollen, whose foundations are believed to date back to the 11th century. That’s damn near a thousand years...

Last year we served over 600,000 meals (an average of 12,000 a week). This
number of diners would fill Wembley stadium 7 times over.

We attached a pedometer to some staff at Pen y Bryn for fun, and on a busy evening shift, a waitress might walk some 8 miles. Waiters walk some 6 miles, which either proves that blokes are lazier, or more intelligent. It is rumoured that Duncan when he was at the Glasfryn once walked 47 yards completely unaided in a single night, but evidence from the CCTV cameras does not support this.

Last year as a company we sold something like 160,000 bottles of over 400 different wines

The family that re-modelled the Pant Yr Ochain in the 18th Century made their money from the slave trade. Since 1785, the building has changed hands only once.

Last year as a company we sold rather a lot of shoulders and shanks of lamb. In fact, if all the lambs stood in line, they would form a queue 4 miles long.

A recent staff mailing

If each member of staff on our payroll was on average 1/16th inch thick, and everyone stood together front-to-back, we’d need a book shelf almost 4 ft long to accommodate us all.

Angelo and Graham are well known for having their own minds about things (only dead fish swim with the flow etc). Once when they were lost on a dual carriageway outside London, head office sent a text message with directions, adding "Take extreme caution… there has been a warning on the radio that there is a car travelling the wrong way down the dual carriageway you are on". The text message came back "One??? There are bloody hundreds of them…"

Unusual jobs that our customers have had:

Rob Rodgers, a local at the Grosvenor Arms and now a Landscape Architect, once had a job as a fruit taster. He worked for the DFB or Deciduous Fruit Board based in the Strand in London during the early 1980’s and spent his time hanging around docks in Northern European ports, sometimes on ships and sometimes in warehouses. He tasted only apples, pears and grapes but mostly grapes, often eating between 2lbs and 3lbs of before lunchtime. Generally he never spat them out despite this being the common practice because he didn’t like the mess that was left by half eaten grapes on the floor. He tells us that after a certain point the mouth becomes very acid and you lose your ability to discern one grape from another.

So what do you look for when you’re tasting grapes? Apparently you start by looking for sulphur damage. The grapes are packed in flat boxes with a paper lining which is soaked in a chemical that gives off sulphur Dioxide. This is a mild preservative but too much can damage the grapes around the stem. Secondly you check for turgidity, or how firm they are and finally you check for sweetness. Storage temperature is also important, if grapes drop below freezing they are irrevocably damaged.

Strangely the job required a degree. It didn’t matter what subject the degree was in but a degree was required.

Rob tells us it was a job he tired of quickly with the only enjoyable bit being seeing all the docks. He only lasted 8 months and he has never eaten grapes since.

If you would like to tell us about your unusual job please email duncan.lochhead@brunningandprice.co.uk

Duncan from the office was once injured by a wardrobe. "It was a vicious and cowardly assault.", he said afterwards, "I was looking the other way at the time and it blind-sided me. I had a close look afterwards and discovered it was French". Whilst on the subject of assault by inanimate objects, Duncan also sustained a nasty eye injury caused by his own newspaper. "I’ve always been into extreme sports", he said," but I’ve always thought that wearing goggles to read the Sunday Sport was a bit girly. Not any more. There’s a good reason for Health and Safety guidelines, and I shall no longer poo poo them. It’s goggles every time from now on".