I’ve had the dubious pleasure of an hour in Reading this evening, whether by good luck or bad. You could consider that lady luck had waved her wand and allowed my first train to be bang on time so I caught the late-running train before the one I would normally catch to Reading.

Equally, you might regard it as very bad luck indeed to find myself, not a stone’s throw from the place I’ve just spent a year trying to escape from with an hour to kill. That’s sort of the circular start and end to this story…..

Looking forward to an hour of time where I could stroll around in a leisurely manner, I found my way off the train and sorted myself out with a ‘comfort break’. Ah ha – now an hour to get myself a fabulously inventive shot. My plan had been an ariel shot of a big commuter train disgorging its passengers, shot from the bridge with the big glass windows. BUT when I got up there, I quickly realised that there was no opportunity for such a shot because what the train itself didn’t obscure, the platform’s roof did. Ah well, the best-laid plans….

So, never giving up, I decided to wander around and find myself something interesting to shoot. It’s surprising how often I don’t have a camera in my hand and see ‘photo opportunities’ everywhere yet when I’m primed up (well zoomed up in photographer’s language) and ready to go, nothing, nada, zilch.

I considered whether a shot across the station of the front of the Mecca bingo hall would provide me with what I needed and decided that even with my track record it looked just too seedy and horrid to be worthy and that’s saying something coming from the queen of the banal.

Strolling round became a bore, dragging a suitcase on a wheel and a half is a bit of a chore, as well as being distinctly embarrassing as I walk to announce myself with the clickety-click (now WHY didn’t I shoot my bingo hall) of the half wheel. I’d more or less given up and resigned myself to another shot at home late tonight when I spotted these ‘things’.

It tickled me to wonder whether they’d been put there to stop the poor, hapless souls of Reading from escaping to a better place, or whether they were there to ensure that no-one who was passing through would be stupid enough to consider staying a while – they are far from benign. They are the old (possibly Victorian I’d say) equivalent of that nasty of nastys, the razor wire.

Sitting on the train, I realise probably for the first time, just how many ‘me’s’ there are. I’m earwigging a conversation between two strangers in the seats in front of me who are trading stories about how many days a week they have to stay up in London and how, despite that, they still think that moving to the West Country is the best thing they’ve ever done. I so hope that my life settles down enough that I end up feeling the same way. I know I will but in the meantime I’m still just soooooooo tired. One day I will recover from this exhaustion.

Right now I can’t think further than a couple of hours from now, when I climb down onto the station platform and wave to DM waiting for me on the bridge.

A year ago, I was photographing something I'll see again.... and the year before, I was in the throes of joy.