Canny Coont*

My good friend John has pointed out that my arithmetic was wrong in my previous piece here about Wetherspoons. In that article I managed to convert 2.5 megalitres into 45,000 nines of beer when actually it should be 60,000, or, to be precise 61,736. Or, in pints, 4,445,000.

Now many of you will not know that in my native Scotland, when I was a lad, we had both Mathematics and Arithmetic O Levels. These were back in the days when you either got a "Pass" or a "Fail". Yes they used that word. "Fail". You'll be amazed to know I have both - for all the good they did me. So how did this error come about? Put simply, I failed to correctly multiply 4 by 15 and get the right answer. My old teachers would no doubt have given me a quick tap on the wrist with a strap to point out the error of my ways. They did that sort of thing then to make it harder to forget things. But these are more enlightened times, so Dear Reader, you are now aware that Wetherspoons sell even more beer than I told you and its importance to British brewing is even more than I indicated.

It really is a lot of beer, though I don't know how much of it is real ale.  That's a pity.

Didn't stop me being a bit dissatisfied with the choice in the Regal Moon last night though.

* Can't count  - as my old Supplementary Benefits trainer once told me.