pd.read_hdf throws 'cannot set WRITABLE flag to True of this array'
It seems that time-date strings were causing the problem and when I converted these from text to numpy (pd.to_datetime()) and stored the table and the problem went away so perhaps it has something to do with text data?
When running
pd.read_hdf('myfile.h5')
I get the following traceback error:

[[...some longer traceback]]
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pandas/io/pytables.py in
  read_array(self, key, start, stop)    2487     2488         if
  isinstance(node, tables.VLArray):
  -> 2489             ret = node[0][start:stop]    2490         else:    2491             dtype = getattr(attrs, 'value_type', None)
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/tables/vlarray.py in
  getitem(self, key)
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/tables/vlarray.py in read(self,
  start, stop, step)
tables/hdf5extension.pyx in tables.hdf5extension.VLArray._read_array()
ValueError: cannot set WRITEABLE flag to True of this array

No clue what's going on. I've tried reinstalling tables, pandas everything basically, but doesn't want to read it.