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BUBBLETROUBLE.J_i~ Brown.
What were they, I wondered, these circular marks on the print. A furious inspection of the negative gave me the answer - air bubbles. I had read about them of coursewe all have - but they were always some-thiny. that happened to the other guy. With my ultra careful processing there was no chance of bubbles on my films I small
But there they were - small circular marks on the negative that meant hours of spotting and as Murphy says "If you are going to get bubbles, they will be on your best p~ctures." With a rare bout of determination I vowed that they would not occur again. But how to avoid them 7 Wetting Agent, I thought - make sure the film wets prop-erly & and there is no chance of bubbles. Now, I like to use a Wetting Agent in the final rinse so it seemed like a good idea to empty the tank & let it drain, like washing up, without rinsing it.
When I c011e to load my next film to the tank (I'm in a hurry, of course, and in e changing beg) it stopped about two inches into the spirel. I can't remem~r whet I said, but it wes something like· "Oh dear, whet e pity". Then I remembered: Wetting Agent is hygroscopic - it picks up water from the etmosphere - and I hadn't rinsed the spirel. It seemed dry, but close exa•in-ation showed. "it to be very slightly sticky. Since thet ·day I have emptied the devel-oping tank but not rinsed it & made sure thet all treces of Wetting Agent are weshed of the ·spirel. Result 7 No more air bubbles & no more sticking films. Air bubbles always heppen to the other guy-dont t~y 7
Heritage 1;1cws HE village of Meriden, in Warwick~hire. is generally said to be at the centre of F.ngland (or at any rate . of :England and Wa.les). Acco~u!g fo a report by Solihull Council: m \\°nose domain_it is. ma_nyforeign tourists are disappointed because they can find ·nothing in it to demonstrate the filct except a mediaeval stone cross and a bicyclists' memorial stone. There is no visitors' car park and no "facilities to get a cup of tea or coffee for the weary traveller (sic)". So the council suggests, among other things, new parking bays for tourists_ at the village pond, tree-planting "to hide eyesores" (what eyesores?), and landscaping ot the main roads through the village. This is not good enough. There should be signposts all over the place indicating the way to the "Centre of England", and at the actual Centre a manned Interpretive Centre, with diagrams, charts and recorded "audiophone" lectures in six languages on the concept of environmental centrality. in the English countryside. · What these foreign toutjsts would really like are a few old tales and legendary features-for instance, a figure which appears at the Centre on Midsummer Eve. believed by the villagers to be the ghost of a Meriden girl ravished in the Middle Ages by a wicked baron with an interest in geography who had sworn to wreak his evil will at the exact centre of England. There might. on the other hand. be an Oracle at the Centre, on the analogy of Delphi. the "Navel of the Earth". Instead of ambiguous utterances, ·the Pythoness. a council leisure official. would give out useful information about local nature trails,/ places of "tourist in!t:r~st" and · bed and breakfastfac1hhes. All this would cost the Solihull Council money. But it would be returned a hundredfold from the pockets of foreign tourists as Meriden itself became a precious part of our English Heritage.
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