Happy hours at Valley were always pretty good (one needed to anaesthetise the brain, after all, if stuck on Ynys Mon for the weekend!). I particularly remember the then Staish (ex Lightnings) calling happy hour to order and then drawing attention to a carpet sample that he had brought with him. He then invited the assembled company to do their worst to it...
As you can imagine, several pints of beer and stubbings-out of fag ends later, this small piece of carpet was in a fairly sorry state. However, the Staish wasn't done yet - he demanded a crow scarer (of a QFI who shall remain nameless, and who had a reputation for having such things about him at the most unusual moments). A few seconds, a particularly loud detonation and numerous sets of sore eardrums later, the poor carpet sample had been reduced to a shredded, ash-stained, beer-soaked, smouldering shadow of its former self - at which point he Staish announced that there was no way that this grade of carpet was ever going to do for
his bar and told the Mess committee to go and find something more capable of withstanding the rigours of Mess life!
They did.
Gadget 