Shopping at an IGA Supermarket near me is a bit like stepping back in time.

The cash registers don’t have the full colour screens like in Coles and Safeway.

But the shelves do have those electronic price tags that were all the rage in the early-noughties at places like K-Mart, before they realised that they end up putting paper signs up to highlight the specials anyway.

What really grabbed me is that IGA stocks products that have disappeared from Coles and Safeway. Like that AGB brand garlic bread I used to buy all the time. Probably not authentic (AGB stands for “Australian Garlic Bread”), but delicious. And the product that seems to come and go in availability: recycled tissues. I’ll take the opportunity to stock up, in case they disappear again.

In Bentleigh, a brand new shiny IGA just opened in the new arcade. The sign on the arcade claims it to be “Bentleigh Shopping Centre” — something of a misnomer, since the whole street could quite reasonably claim that name.

The receipt from the brand new shiny IGA claims it to be “West Bentleigh” — a suburb that doesn’t exist (west of Bentleigh is East Brighton, daaaaahling) and besides, it’s only about 200 metres from the Bentleigh Post Office, and not much further from the railway station. It’s about as central to Bentleigh as you can get.

But the prices and range seemed okay, so if it’s convenient, I’ll shop there again.