ashfield vs burwood

today i had to find a birthday present for someone who doesn’t need anything. i needed it fast and it needed to be cheap, but without looking cheap. you know the kind of thing. so tek gifts & things was not an option. k-mart could have provided the answer, but i just ... i don’t know ... i am so bored with k-mart. even the name of the store sends me to sleep, let alone going in here.

i have been reading a book called speed the plough to try and find out more about some of the wonderful old houses i am finding on my walks around the municipality in my attempts to restrict the growth of my girth resulting from the extra calories which are making its way into my body thanks to my tarts research. (for any interested readers : yes this research is ongoing, but i am stuck at the moment trying to decide whether the summer hill village patisserie’s pear and ricotta tart is worth nine, or nine and a half stars. i think what will eventually determine this is consistency. is it as good on say a tuesday as it is on a friday? how about a monday? saturday? and so on.)

according to speed the plough, in the seventies ashfield councillors were rueing the fact that people were shopping in burwood rather than ashfield which lead them to pull down the beautiful old town hall which once stood on liverpool road and build the monstrosity which currently houses the library and council as well as k-mart, coles woolworths and franklins. and they were well pleased with themselves. (this was in the days before superannuation funds financed shopping centres.)

so i decided to do what ashfield shoppers seem to have been doing since the seventies and head down the road to burwood, where i found the outrageous cathedral of consumerism called westfield burwood. this place is like a tardis and probably produces the same amount of carbon emissions as several african nations. you could fit the entire wagga cbd inside this thing. after several hour of walking and browsing i found a gift and went home exhausted humming a hall and oates song and feeling like i had been to the dentist.

i think ashfield lost. but a trip to tek’s gifts & things is less stressful.