The closed shop

My sisters - one on each side - were both marching girls, a uniquely New Zealand sport which gave me a small fetish for white bots and busby hats, and the opportunity to roam around the small towns and big cities of 1980s Aotearoa. 

One of the girls would always be off to compete somewhere in the South Island every weekend, and Mum and Dad were always helping out in some way, and I was too small to stay home alone, so I'd have to tag along. 

Girls were still icky, so the actual sport was dull, but the glory was getting to roam free, have a look around, try out all the different playgrounds, see what Space Invaders parlors I could find, and check out the shops. Because in those days, there were comics everywhere. All the corner stores and supermarkets and cafes had a rack of something.

It was usually some weird remaindered DCs or a few Marvels that no other shop for 200kms in any direction was also selling, but even a small town like Waimate had a couple of good shops that were worth hoofing it to. With a small amount of pocket money having to go a long way, I'd get something from somewhere, and I was just lucky that I had a taste for all kinds of comics.

The only difficult part was that it was usually a weekend affair - often a Sunday - and the whole damn country shut down over the weekend, so the really good stuff in the bookstores was inaccessible. You'd peek in the windows and see all sorts of great stuff, but it was 3pm on a Sunday, and there was no way of getting in

And the Wainoni Bookshop, right next to Porritt Park in Christchurch was the biggest tease at all. When I got there in the mid-80s I was going through one of my regular obsessions with 2000ad, and they had all sorts of stuff in there - progs going back months, including ones I'd missed, a Sci-Fi special, and maybe even the most recent annual.

They were right there, just behind a plane of glass, and might have well have been on the fucking moon. We were going back home that afternoon, hundreds of kilometers away, there was no way of getting back. I even checked to se if there was a little flat attached, where an owner might live and open up, but there was nothing, just the opening hours stenciled into the door, taunting me with their impossibility.

There was a dairy next to it that was open seven days, and I got a Brave and Bold comic for $1.03, but that was it. I never got back to that bookshop, it was replaced by a terrific little Indian takeaway years ago.

I did not have a traumatic childhood. Apart from the usual bumps and bruises, there's nothing mentally scarring, but man, I still remember how much I wanted to get inside that closed shop, and it still hurts a bit.