Just across the street from London’s Paddington Station, is a small photo shop where I have occasionally taken in some film for developing. The voyeuristic delights (and horrors) of processing the customers’ holiday snaps must be a poor substitute for the chance to leave cold and rainy old Paddington for the balmier climes of foreign parts.

And some of those foreign parts, in all their gynaecological detail, doubtless show up in the work load from time to time. Oh, well: brightens up a drab day doesn’t it? And most of the snaps get stuck in a bottom drawer and forgotten; better remembered, perhaps, by the photo processor than the picture-taker. Think about it when next you drop off the roll of film with the bared buttocks of Auntie Maude by the swimming pool.

Funny old waste of trees, most holiday photos……

A Morris Minor, a café noir –
Banana smoothie, snails in a jar.
Three dodgy sailors, a girl on skates –
A little too muscled from doing weights.

A family wedding, a sushi bar –
Sand in the Seychelles, karaoke star.
Lads on the razzle get lost in love.
Paddington station, rain clouds above.

The crumpled sheets of a long hot summer.
Stored images like an acorn, drop.
Squirreled away, but still remembered
by the man in the photo shop.

Rush hour on Praed Street: behind the glass –
a picture process, in one hour fast.
Intimate portraits of topless wives –
flashed indiscretions: snap-happy lives.