Sitting in the back of our car, the seat belt tightened to form a rest for my head I would half sleep as we made our way into town, the argument over whose tape we would listen to on the journey already played out; The pixies, The cure, Morrisey, World of Twist someone or other would be singing in my ear as I slept through the journey. Sometimes one or both my sisters would join me and my brother, but always both my parents. We would park behind disused factories in a car park, run by men who I never knew if they even owned the land, later when this closed to become a hotel and casino we mover to smaller spaces behind our opticians nestled amongst the seemingly ancient buildings, the alley ways trod by ghosts and more human strangers of the night.
My mother would drag us to Laura Ashley in a shower of flowered material, fruit covered curtains and tastefully arrayed furniture. We might (if we were good) go to the eco coffee shop for organic drinks and banna loaf whilst music played by Amazonian tribes, hardly ever seen by explorers but somehow always recorded, burbled away in the background. Sometimes it would be off to Domino's to look over the model tanks and planes and glass marble collections.
But for me the best time came with our visit to the book store Dillon's, the rows of books waiting to be taken down, gently dusted and parted to revel their workings. Amongst these books I would alway be fascinated with the boxes of comics, never usually held on the shelves seemingly brought in just to be marked down and placed in boxes for me to amble through. Covers with men from the past thrown into now, sword wielding travelers, fantastic animals and fantastical places hidden behind dust bags, each comic the same price as one weeks pocket money.

My most prized find was a collection of covers featuring Dick Grayson in his transiton from Robin to Nightwing, turned into large black and white images, like printing plates from Victorian novels. Here was Grayson held by batman as his parents lay crumpled on the floor, or clinging to an ivy filled bell tower a mad man above him ready to strike as a storm raged all around him, a whirwind of images of nuns, laughing madmen and super powered teenagers. A possesion that I still have to this day. When I was 13 I received an award from my school for efforts in class, a ten pound book token from the store, some students spent theirs on exercise books, some on children's stories, I got a giant collected edition of Batman through the ages from the lantern jawed 1950's to barrel chested 1960's to dark multi world 80's . My home room teacher told me it was an "interesting" choice to make.
Coming home tonight Just for one second I wanted to go back to that time. Not in any way to change my younger self, therefore changing my present self, if I had to live my life again I would take great care, pay the upmost attention do anything to ensure I did everything exactly the same, the same falls and bumps, split lips, black eyes, the illness that marked years of my teenage existence; these things made me without them and many others like them I don't know who I would be but I know it would be me. No not to changes anything but just to experience that sense of looking for something, finding comics where men are coated in alien metals and blasted into the future, wonder at the flashes of lightning as Nightwing clings for dear life, watch as the demons head rising out of the earth shoulders hunched. I think I would enjoy sitting watching my mother choose new curtains for our kitchen, browsing the models with my father or arguing over which marbles to buy with my brother, but most of all I know I would enjoy those minutes spent searching in those boxes.