The royal county of Berkshire is a complex story. It has its ups and its downs like any other place in the country. It also has a variety of interesting corners and spaces to enjoy and be outdoors in too.
The trouble is it’s not a dark place it just has secrets hidden in darkness.
This is the sentiment I picked up as I spoke to a few individuals who knew the area well. They love it and care for it as far as any other resident does, but they had something else to say that most residents could not. They could voice concerns and hope it was dealt with because it was said.
At a particular point not even this seemed true. It’s down to a few factors that were far out of most people’s control, but there was a secret force guiding some events that made it appear unsolvable.
I don’t mean powers like witchcraft and spells.
I mean a belief that to quell any sort of enquiry of or dissent from a particular worldview or view of things that is established and set in concrete as a fixed way of doing things is a wrong thing to do. I met a few of these people in Berkshire and my assessment is I don’t want to meet any such again.
The types of issues that affected Reading mostly but also a few areas further beyond are difficult to contextualise, or to put down into prose. It’s on record and people know their own experience like the back of their hand so it’s not such a set of records that’s needed.
My task as a non-native was to find out what was going on rather than try to understand what it was people meant in everything they did. It entailed finding a location or two. It didn’t mean searching the web or trawling crowds to meet people to take tipoffs based on hearsay to find out further.
Eventually I found out two locations in central London.
I wasn’t sure of one and I was put off by the other. It was an office used by researchers but it was an address the other people I met didn’t want to look too far into without official guidance there. It’s difficult to pick up on people who do difficult things and the facts associated with these people are tricky to hear at times.
The second office was more of an old-style data centre. It was a place that felt reminiscent of wartime Bletchley Park but it had the look of a modern data facility that is involved in emails and web search. In this instance its purpose was to take the results of the researchers and make use out of it.
The way Reading is wired into it is that many of the staff lived and emerged from the town and its surrounding area. The type of the research they did was scientific in nature. It’s too shady an area to expose because of the ifs and buts of things that aren’t really clear.
I spoke to one lady of seniority in the company which owned the operation.
She was particularly interested in quantum physics as well as human behaviour. Her background is “test tubes, and stuff”, she told me. It’s an admission that carries a feeling of nostalgia. It was as if her work at the time wasn’t satisfying her enough for it to be worth it.
She carried on as “it’s research, after all”, she concluded.
The trouble is the work was insecure at times. It was under attack by those who wanted to steal it and it was unclear what use it had so others surveilled the labs. It meant staff members had to be careful in how they lived. It was a case of security measures inside buildings, and safety features at home.
The less careful were tapped on the shoulder and offered incentives to betray information to sources. It meant other staff were put under threat and had their work taken. It also meant potential employees were tracked early on, and it led to misunderstandings which resulted in horrific incidents in Berkshire at the time.
