24-hour Spar adds inches to your waist line - Fun Thing # 62

It's late at night, and even though there's a cupboard full of ingredients, even though I'm of the sort that bakes their own bread, buys free ranged organic eggs from the local farmers market, enjoys homemade jam, grows basil......

It's time for a pot noodle from 24 hour Spar!

Aberystwyth is a bustling metropolis alright, there's not just three streets, a camera obscura (the largest one in the whole world) and, well, the sea; we've 24 hour shop to pander to our every need whatever the time. Not to mention 'Little' Spar for snacks when you've come down the hill from a hard day of lectures -maybe a cider lollipop in the summer? Many a student can be caught being blown all about the seafront at 3am in search of some wonderful item that only a 24 hour convenience store can provide. That or they're drunk.

Okay, they're usually drunk and have suffered the indignity of stumbling out of 'Pier' or 'Bay'. Both are dens of iniquity where the walls sweat. The only difference between the two being that they tell you off or chinking glasses in the Pier. Oh, and should the A-Team be trapped in that miserable non-glass chinking fascist regime, then B.A Baracas could make some serious weaponry out of the corrugated tin roof. This is in direct contrast to the Bay, where a friend and I managed to get trapped in the dark cellar when we went in search of toilets with paper (luxuries, luxuries); we weren't able to make anything and our phones barely lit up the Victorian gloom....

Back to Spar; our florescent paradise. Home of overly priced baguettes, pot noodles, ready chilled wine and giant bags of crisps that you could try and sleep in after you've eaten one. Oh and all those strange mini-muffin things they have hanging around in the impulse buy area near the tills. It's the closest thing Aber has to the 'House of the Rising Sun', which of course it beats. The sun never sets on Spar, and they have more to sell than flesh and opium. It is a comfort in these dark days of essay deadlines, always ready to provide escape from actual cooking, ease weary thoughts and sell 'Fry's Chocolate Creams', which really are very lovely when dipped in whisky.