It’s just one more example of the way Milltown is changing. With the demand for broom handles and galvanised buckets on the wane, the last ironmongers in town has shut for good. It was the sort of shop that stocked everything you could possibly want, and plenty more besides. Mousetraps: a choice of twenty types, depending whether you wanted the mouse captured dead or alive. False beards - from goatee to Father Christmas - in a variety of colours. Fly-paper, tap-washers, wing-nuts, chicken wire, grommets, gussets, gaskets, stop-cocks, sneck-lifters, knicker elastic, knobs and knockers: you name it.

Shops like this have passed their sell-by dates, more’s the pity. Shopping’s a lifestyle experience these days, catering for spendthrift zombies. Supermarkets sell dreams and aspirations, shrink-wrapped and portion controlled. Never again will we be able to buy nails and screws by the kilo, or (in response to a whispered request, sotto voce) by the pound.

The shop window was whitewashed, which only served to sharpen our curiosity about what might be going on inside. Were we finally going to get the brothel and bawdy house that the town had been crying out for all these years? Had our prayers for a reputable 24-hour pawnshop been answered?

The answer wasn’t long in coming. A name - Sun Stroke - soon appeared, painted discreetly on the window. At first we thought that Milltown might have its first massage parlour. And if we weren’t going to get a brothel and bawdy house, then a massage parlour seemed the next best thing. But no; Sun Stroke turns out to be a tanning studio. Wow: punters can now swap Pennine pallor for the look - creased and leathery, windswept and weather-beaten - that’s been popularised over the centuries by the peasantry of Andalucia.

It’s difficult to know why people would pay good money for a sunbed tan, especially when they could achieve much the same effect by knocking back a dozen bottles of Sunny Delight. No matter, the first customers are queuing up to give their peachy complexions a grilling. With a turn of a dial they have a choice of colours: light tan, tawny or the full tandoori.

The effect is immediate and startling. An English roses, pale but interesting, emerges from Sun Stroke as a swarthy, self-basting butterball. A guy with a round face - pitted by adolescent acne and coloured by fake tan - reels out the door. It looks unnervingly like there’s a gigantic satsuma between his shoulder blades.

The tans will fade, and the skin cancers will hopefully respond to treatment. Yes, when the tanning craze has run its course - as it surely will - the need for that bordello will be greater than ever.