Parramatta and the slappers

We did a bit of a field trip to the Westfield mall out at Parramatta this evening. Personally, if you asked me what I wanted to do on a Thursday night - go to Parramatta or perhaps clean up a dead dog that has been lying out in the street for 17 days - I'd probably pick the dog. Even if the dog had to be scooped up by hand. Parramatta is just one of those places that fails to entice me with its glamour.

The main reason for the trip was to get some appropriate footwear for our trip to the snow next weekend. All my old boots fell apart last year, so they were binned before we moved, so I needed something for shuffling around in the slush. So did number one. We have been explaining to him for a week that wearing non-waterproof trainers and getting wet feet when the temperature is below zero is not a good idea, but it's pretty much impossible to get that concept through to someone who has never seen snow and never seen the thermometer in negative numbers. I ended up with blue toes on my first trip to the snow, and I don't want his trip to go the same way. Having no feeling in your toes for a year is not pleasant.

So we got some boots, and then whiled away an hour or so watching the silly slappers walking past. The whole mall was unbelievable in terms of odd looking people. We got the boots at Kmart, and all the serving staff looked like a member of the Munster family. I can understand employing maybe a few Munsters, but employing an army of them must smack of nepotism after a while. Or a serious case of suburban inbreeding.

There was one woman that encapsulated Parramatta for me. She was maybe 21, rake thin, ugg boots and pushing a pram and had a four year old in tow as well. She was standing a few feet from me, yelling at the 4 year old at the top of her lungs, and in an accent that threatened to peel the paint from the walls.

She finally managed to collect the errant youngster and was on her way. It was then that I noticed that she was wearing a Playboy bunny singlet.

I can put up with 17 year old tarts wearing those things, but once you start to squeeze out the kids, I think it is a good idea to start dressing a bit more like a respectable adult and less like a pole dancer. There's that whole idea of setting a good example to the kiddies. Clearly, she had no idea.

Getting out of Parramatta brought home the worst aspect of it - they've messed with the street system in order to make it really hard to leave. Once you're in there, it's damned near impossible to get out.

Now that is a scary thought.