Common Sense Ken and the disappearing fish & chip van?

13th March 2025

Council CMT meetings are exciting (Community, Markets and Tourism), high adrenaline affairs where the nitty gritty of doing great things for Ross is talked about. Actually, on Tuesday’s one, a councillor was seen yawning a few times, but to be fair it did go on for a whopping two and a half hours!
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In May, it’s VE Day number 80…. and with a celebration / commemoration to take place at the Prospect, did someone think a Fish and Chip van could feed the masses?
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Now it turned out on Monday's meeting, that there was news that the operator of the van was looking for a significant financial commitment.
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As the topic was discussed, and options talked about, the idea seemed to scrapped - but when that discussion started, and when asked how many people turned up last time to a VE day event, it was quickly estimated at about 200...
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What? Hold on!
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Please insert in your mind the sound effect of a needle being whacked off a playing record.

We’ve asked Common Sense Ken to look into this.
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Two hundred people he said? Can you imagine the queue? Either the queue would be incredibly long or that chip van would need to be more like a “world’s biggest mobile chip shop”, "more an 18-wheeler purpose built articulated lorry than humble chip van".
"Think about it, it’s a lot of chips".
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How many chips exactly? Let’s find out - Ken told us this is exactly the kind of job he likes!
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Now, Common Sense Ken has a complete distrust of available A.I. to get an answer, preferring to use good old fashioned maths and science… so what did he find out?
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Ken procured a bag of chips from local purveyors Seven Seas (as Audrey’s wasn’t open and Mings was further from his car), and bringing the chips into his make-shift laboratory (home), he decided to count the chips in the regular portion.
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Ken found that there were 68 tasty, crisp, (yet fluffy on the inside), potato based fried morsels inside. He also observed there were a further 43 smaller pieces in the paper package, which whilst being partial chips, could not be considered actual chips for significant numerical consideration as is.

Ken ascertained that the average size of one of these smaller chip-pieces equated to roughly 1/3 of a chip. A third of 43 equals “14 and a third” or 14.3 recurring, and this was added to the 68 full chips to give a total of 82.33 chips per portion.
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Nearly finished with his calculations, Ken multiplied this by an estimated 200 diners, giving a total of 16,467 chips (when rounded up to the nearest whole number). "That's an effing lot of chips!", he exclaimed, although he used a similar more unprintable adjective.
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Ken also wanted to state in his findings that NO chips were initially stuck to the paper, this due to his top tip of ‘only ask for salt, then put vinegar on when you get home, because it's the vinegar that mostly what makes them stick to the paper!’ (who at the back was saying this website isn’t useful?).
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Right, hold on, this maths hasn’t helped at all has it?
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Right, scrap all that - a bit like the chip van.

Back on the subject of this upcoming VE 80 event, a Big Band from Hereford was lined up to play some swing, but that’s having to be re-thought as in Tuesday's meeting it was revealed that they’d like to know they’d be kept dry if the weather turned for the worst. With marquee hire costs quickly looked into, and total spends being higher than the available budget for the event's entertainment, that is being re-thought too. One suggestion is to ask Ross Town Band instead - perhaps they might be more gnarly and weather-hardened when it comes to any potential hurricane conditions?
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On the subject of common sense, let’s leave you with one final other treat/highlight:
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In the very  same CMT meeting, it was discussed how the installation of timers had been looked into for the Christmas Lights on the way out to Wilton Road, to save costs and energy. When it was revealed that the huge costs of buying and installing them would take decades to justify, and considering the very low energy consumption of the LEDs, one councillor wanted to have his say on the matter before they dismissed the idea purely based on financial considerations.
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The councillor declared that they should also consider these timers helping to meet council commitments to “darker skies” in Herefordshire. Moments later another immediately said back with a puzzled expression that they’d be turned off in the day? :)

The resulting glowing red face of the councillor was saved somewhat by a quick-thinking comrade who said the timers could turn the xmas lights off after midnight too, but it was too late to save the embarrassment.

...Common Sense Ken invoiced £75 for his efforts, plus expenses.