This’ll be a short one. I was planning to go to McThurkels on Tara Street, suggested on the Twitter machine by the most useful @publinie (worth a follow – it lists discount drinks/food offers and special events in Dublin pubs. Also to be found on the web, here.)

In fact I did go to McThurkels but, by the time I got there, the Friday Fiver deal was sold out. I’ll try it again in a few weeks. Nice looking pub, though. Just opposite the Irish Times building.

So, I was hungry and a tad disappointed. I spotted a Spar across the road, popped in, checked that they had food and a seating area and had a look at what was on offer.

Now, do bear in mind that Spar is a convenience store and not a restaurant. So apart from rolls and sandwiches and the overpriced offers from the Insomnia concession, it’s pretty much all fried or otherwise carbo-fat food. I’m not condemning or being sniffy about this. It’s just a fact.

For your fiver, there’s quite a choice: sausage rolls, wings, vegetarian lasagne, chips and chicken drumsticks. I chose the latter with chips. For my €2.70 I got two drumsticks, a shovel load of ‘chips’ (fried potato cubes), a big squirt of garlic mayo and a smaller squirt of sweet chili sauce.

The drumsticks were quite moist (I love that word) and coated in that salty crunchy substance that fried chicken tends to be coated in. Someone had put chili powder in it which was a nice surprise. They were quite meaty too. The spud cubes weren’t great: lukewarm and a bit soft. But there were lots of them and I polished them off.

Nothing much more to be said. Fuelled. For €2.70. Job done.