BP Service Stations

My dad lives nearby and said this would be a better petrol station than the one at the Morrisons near Crossmyloof Station, so I came here this morning to fill up. Reasons why it was a nice petrol-​purchasing experience include:
a) My petrol tank has some kind of air pocket in it and sometimes it takes what seems like hours of teeny bursts of the petrol trigger thing to fill up, but this time I defeated the air pocket and went all out. That sounds weird, and a bit stupid but it makes sense to me. Skip to b) if you want.
b) There is a MARKS AND SPENCER inside. This is awesome. I love M&S. I have recently discovered the delights of those shaky salad thingies and they’re delicious. So I get a bit excited when I see an M&S. I didn’t buy a shaky salad today, I got a baguette.
c) The staff were incredibly cool. It was quite early on a Sunday morning (ok 10am) and a car the same make, model and colour was at another pump so I got confused at the till, prompting a not-​patronising-​just-​friendly correction by the till dude who made me giggle.
Five stars for you BP, oil spill or no!

This is the best combination ever — a petrol station and a Marks and Spencers. Whenever I come here as well as topping up the old petrol I can also top up of delicious snacks too, usually a sandwich or a bag of Percy Pigs.
Even though this Markies is just the size of a regular garage, it stocks a heck of a lot of products and they have a good range in addition to a surplus of snacks. If you don’t have anything in for dinner you can pick something up here and they even do fresh rolls for breakfast. Excellent!

The Southside can be a bit spaced out in parts, and due to it’s largely residential nature, finding shops and amenities in some areas can be a surprisingly long and drawn-​out process. Strolling past here in the stifling heat a few weeks past, arriving at a fully air-​conditioned Marks and Sparks in a petrol station was truly a moment to savour.
It was wonderfully freezing inside, and despite it’s small size they seem to cram in everything you could want. My current favourite find is a meditteranean rice and chorizo snack tub thingy, that’s on a 2 for £3 offer just now and tastes far more exciting than it sounds.
It is in a petrol station, so expect a fiery, horrifying end if someone drops a fag outside, but for me it all just adds to the excitement of a Marks and Spencer’s shopping trip.

As the most convenient twenty four hour garage in this stretch of the Southside, it deserves a three star review: that it is not just a garage, but a Marks and Spencers food store, it earns the fourth star. Well stocked, with the M and S range of interesting if expensive goods, from cereals to meals for one, it is clean and always efficient: I rarely have to queue for my purchases, and I always end up with more in the basket than hoped for.
It also has a car wash, fresh coffee and cakes for take away (the idea that this is a café, as the sign suggests, is rather optimistic!), and it is one of the few garages where browsing the shelves is a pleasure rather than a desultory glance. Of course, the prices are M and S, so it isn’t really the best place for late night sweeties: however, I have been known to do a weekly shop here, on late Sunday evening.