Anyone who lives in Paris will recognise this image - it's one of the trains that thunders into train stations in and around the capital and zooms around the place much faster than the metro, which, on the contrary, stops almost everywhere and is exceptionally convenient.

I'm a fan of both - the metro which is infinitely more pleasant than in London, my point of reference, thanks to its airiness and shorter distances between stations - and the RER, as the big train is known, for its rapidity and reach out to the suburbs which is very convenient in many cases.

This photo itself really struck me, and wasn't entirely intentional, but then again, if I hadn't been squeezing the trigger it wouldn't have existed, so I do take some credit..!

It was a soft mush of a thing before I hardened it up, but the funniest thing is that... it's the French flag, and I never realised! Maybe it's the merging of colours, maybe just something in my head, but the fact that something so 'everyday' can conjure up something so universal is either a staggering coincidence or maybe there's some logic there. Subliminal messages from the French government coming through my camera lens..?!

At the risk of going on about it, there's also a sublime lopsided symmetry between the blue and the red, top left and bottom right, seared through and separated by that vicious horizontal slash.

Never stop shooting..!