I spent nearly 10 years fighting to understand a town in the heart of Berkshire, but it’s not easy to say. I arrived without fanfare, having done it before.
I had no help. I didn’t work with anyone. The people already here, ironically, left. They didn’t find much interest in a large town. They didn’t seem the types, anyway.
They went on to find “gold, and glory” elsewhere. It felt odd they did it, and bitter. I saw the back of them and didn’t want to know any further. They also looked the wrong sort.
I explored the town in work, leisure, and social time at a few churches. It wasn’t easy because I wasn’t supposed to fit in. I didn’t try, and so I didn’t fail, either, in what I tried.
Justifying the dark
It begins without light, and slowly grows. It’s my experience in working in hardship and in the lives of others. They feel pain I don’t get, and I feel anguish I can’t share.
It’s tough, but I love the results. I can’t see it at times, and it’s laborious work to make things happen. To begin with it takes a week, and at once it took a whole month.
In the process, other people don’t understand. They have an air of arrogance, and think a different method is better. I almost have to justify the dark, to get on.
The horror that accompanies a deep work is difficult to shake. I still have to get over the things I saw. I found people in a bad condition. I witnessed awful things.
Believing incredibly
The biggest task I had to tackle is the issue of obsession. I encountered people with too many hangups about life. Mostly it was about democracy, which is sad.
In England, politics is a slow but winnable game. It takes time, but over time people get the gist and make it work for themselves. In Reading, no such belief existed.
It was like that for various reasons, and on one hand were those who believed it so because of previous offenses. They felt this party was bad, or that party shit.
I later met the two men who were behind it. They were Labour and Conservative supporters respectively, and made things turn on their enjoyment of it.
It wasn’t pleasant, or pretty, as it went on. They were too insistent for more impressionable residents. As luck would have it, they found broad support as well.
Ending madness
It was a maddening experience, over nine years of hell. I had to deal with endless criminal types, awful manipulation, and interference from far off actors.
In my experience, people tend to cause trouble because on a personal level it’s what makes sense. It’s not my work that’s going to be relevant, but their needs.
The job was to investigate, and to produce research. What it took was time, and a lot of angst. I don’t like difficult situations, and I don’t fare well in it, either.
