The photo not taken

Not taken because I didn’t have my camera with me -- three or four people sat at a table in the sunshine outside a fish and chip shop. A life-size model of a grey heron stood on an adjoining table to which it was padlocked. The fish shop owner was outside and joking with his customers; everyone was laughing. I know them by sight; two of them are people ‘in the community’ who, in another age, might have been in residential care. To be honest, I would have loved to have photographed the scene, but there would have been something Diane Arbus (known for her photos of ‘marginal people’) about it. You see I wasn’t only drawn to the peculiarity of the heron and the rotund fish fryer but the eccentric appearance of the care-in-the community couple. By taking a photo I would have intruded on their afternoon’s conviviality. And there would have been something exploitative about it. I will, though, remember that photo not taken for quite some time.