The comic book stall on Wombwell Market which was a changing point for me - Ian McMillan

For me, there was that changing point between the changing rooms of Wombwell Baths and the changing stock at the comic stall on Wombwell Market where I turned the change from my purse into the palm of my hand. Let me explain.

When I was about ten years old my dad decided that I should learn to swim so we’d go up to Wombwell Baths on a Saturday morning and we’d splash about in that shallow water in the pungent smell of disinfectant.

In the end, he wasn’t that interested in teaching me to swim; he just enjoyed the splashing about as much as I did.

Sometimes he’d launch me as though I was a newly-commissioned yacht and I’d float along on my back for about a yard and then turn over and get a mouthful of water and splash about, spluttering and panicking.

These days Wombwell Baths is a dance studio and I often wonder if, during a pause in the Tap or Modern classes the dancers can hear the sound of ghosts from the past splashing around in the water.

Obviously there’s a laboured gag about tap dancing to be made here and obviously I won’t make it.

Even though I never learned to swim a stroke I loved those Dad and Lad mornings because they brought me and my dad closer together; afterwards we always got a KitKat from the vending machine and we shared it, two sticks each.

Sometimes I would see my mate Chris and his dad at the baths; he was a better swimming learner than me although a piece of household furniture would be a better swimming learner than me.

We’d wave to each other across the noisy baths and on the Monday morning at school we’d exchange a few words about the baths, each of us pretending we could swim better than we actually could.

Then one week he wasn’t there. I looked for him but there was no sign. On Monday at school I asked him where he’d been and he reached into his schoolbag and brought out a copy of a Superman comic. ‘There’s a new comic stall on Wombwell Market’ he said, his eyes gleaming with the collector’s joy of acquisition, ‘and I got this!’

We were both huge comics fans, buying new ones from the newsagent’s in the village with our pocket money when they came out, but this was an older comic from a couple of years ago, well before we started collecting them. ‘There’s all sorts of old comics there’ he said, ‘and you can take your own comics in to swap them.’

‘When is the stall there?’ I asked, and he said ‘Saturday mornings’ and the changing point began to approach. For a few more Saturdays I went to the baths with my dad and we enjoyed the shared Kit Kat but then one week I said that I didn’t want to go anymore. My dad was a bit upset and asked why. He loved those Kit Kats.

I told him about the comic stall and he seemed disappointed because somehow the collecting of comics felt less wholesome than trying to swim.

But the changing point was reached. And from then on, I went to the stall each Saturday morning and came home in the company of a man who could fly.