Welcome to Ashford’s local ‘Star’ shop 😀
Ashling’s mother runs this outlet of it, while Ashling herself get’s to work there part-time whenever she is free from school.
The ‘Star’ logo and branding is my re-tooling of a Pan-European chain of shops named ‘Spar’. Spar shops appear in many Western Europe nations including Ireland and here in Norway where I’m based.. I chose Spar to mimic, mostly because it is so wide-spread in Ireland. Few towns in Ireland exist with out a Spar shop nearby. My old hometown of Leixlip once had 3 within a square kilometer of each other.
I suppose you could compare it to 7-Eleven in the US. Sooner or later you’ll encounter one 🙂
However, that all said, the real-life Ashford doesn’t seem to have one (typical huh?), so I’ve co-oped a Chinese restaurant to act as the ‘Star’ shop in Bata Neart’s Ashford.
Now, for a bit of personal news.
For the past two weeks I have been on another holiday away (I don’t often take time off, but when I do, it’s in batches like this), during which I became engaged to Anna (someone I often consider to be Bata Neart’s executive director). The resulting break in my drawing schedule has resulted in my buffer being halved. Also with an upcoming Emergency Booze Cruise, I’m afraid that I am to forced to suspend one update to keep things going.
Thus Bata Neart will not update next Friday, but on the following Friday instead. Again, I’m sorry about yet another break, and I thank you all for your incredible patience.
Big congratulations, Rawr. 😀
Not a bad reason to miss an update on, that’s for sure. 😉
And I know Spar too, me being Swiss. Though they are quite small around here (what with Migros and Coop plus Volg in the countryside dominating the market there). Reasonably good chain though. And they support our national handball league, so there’s that. 🙂
Chinese restaurants in Ireland… I’ve only been there once and only really in the upper Shannon and Erne region. But I got the honest impression that in any village with more than one restaurant, at least one them will be chinese!
@Azreal: Thank you 😀
@Lukkai: Thank you for saying 😀
Your observations are quite spot-on, many Irish towns and villages have at least one Chinese restaurant or take-away in them. Although some are run by actual Chinese people, very often they are really run by Vietnamese-Irish people 🙂 The menu on offer often is distinctly Indian in nature with many curry-based meals. The result of this being that many Irish wrongly assume that curry is Chinese 😀
Welcome to Bata Neart, by the way. I hope you enjoy reading it 🙂