Waiting

The train from London was delayed according to the announcement on the ’tannoy’, (that is a word I’ve not used or heard for a long time). I’d already got my new phone out to play and taken some pictures of the big old brick building in the background, Hill Paul, which is quite a feature of the land beside the train station and the canal and river lying just beyond it, all at the centre of town.

It was a former wool industry factory and warehouse which was saved from demolition by activists in the 1970s and then became a series fo flats. A friend bought one and nearly ten years ago she arranged with her neighbours on the top floor to let me and my camera take some landscape views of the townscape. At the time I was involved with the local Neighbourhood Plan and some of those pictures were used in the development of the plan and then in its publication.

Tonight I just wanted to explore the capabilities of my phone, even though I’d not yet learnt anything about using it. I just wanted to see what it could produce for a casual user. I went onto the platform and looked back at Hill Paul as other people arrived to wait for the delayed passengers on the incoming train.

I turned around to look across the rails at the opposite platform and noticed reflections of people sitting and standing a few yards away from me down the platform. This scene vaguely reminded me of Edward Hopper’s images, so it has relegated my first and more obvious picture of Hill Paul to becoming an ‘Extra’.