I just developed my first roll of film

Honestly, it was a bit of a faff and I’m not entirely convinced that it’s worth the effort. If all you want is pictures on your computer, there are much easier ways of doing it (the shot above was taken with my phone and transferred to my sharerd folder in seconds).

But – there are other reasons to shoot film that I’m exploring. I snaffled a developer tank from my partner’s dad (thanks Bob) and used Cinestill df96 to make the process as simple as possible. It turns out that getting distilled water was the hardest part of the prep.

Things went… ok. The dev came as a powder which took a long time to dissolve. I think I did something wrong with the dev tank (or it’s broken) because it was a bit leaky. Also, loading the film resulted in a broken sprocket hole which meant I had to use two reels in the tank. Despite all the setbacks, there was a small feeling of triumph when I opened up the tank and saw that there were actually pictures there. Whether they’re properly developed or not is a matter for another time. For the moment, I’m calling this a victory. I’ll have a go at scanning the pics, possibly with one of those cameraphone apps which makes this all seem utterly redundant. As I said before, the aim of this isn’t to get pictures on my computer, it’s to have developed films as a physical object irl.

Laserwriter II by Tamara Shopsin

This is a lovely little book for a very specific kind of reader. I never properly owned a Mac pre-Intel, but always admired them from afar. This fictionalised account of real-world New Mork Mac repair shop TekServe is written with real affection. It reminded me of Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs in that it’s about an eclectic bunch of nerds, but without quite so much archness and irony and a lot more details on printer repair.

A brief note on typesetting: It’s laid out with ragged paragraphs, each with space above and below. This gives each one an individuality and gave me the impression that it had been precisely crafted. Pages often had only a couple of paragraphs on them and sections rarely carry overleaf. I’m guessing that this goes beyond just typesetting and perhaps was how the author wrote the text. It feels very much like a collection of pages. I can imagine a folder on the author’s desktop containing 001.doc, 002.doc and so on.

Some sections of the book are written from the point of view of printer components - laser, fuser, paper feeder, etc - which I didn’t think worked as well as the human characters, but whatever. I liked it. It hasn’t been published in the UK as far as I can tell, but copies are available on eBay and Amazon (use eBay).

Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany

A problem with music books is that they tend to be written by fans. This Kraftwerk biography is probably pretty good if you’re into the music. I’m not really, so I’m not entirely clear why Iread the whole thing. Probably just interest in their processes. Anyway, I wonder what a music bio written by a non-fan would look like. Probably not a commercially good idea, but it would be refreshing to have passages explaining why a particular album wasn’t very good or why the guitar sound so crap. If anyone wants to commission a book from me about all the things wrong with the Manic Street Preachers, then they should get in touch. I reckon I could bash that out in a couple of months.

Shantaram

There’s many things wrong with AppleTV’s adaptation of Shantaram, but whoever decided to cast Charlie Hunnan as a master of accents was taking the piss.

'Vera' and the sheer terror of tea, toast and buttered bread

Honestly, I found the opening 80 or so pages of Vera to be a real slog. The pace is so slow and mannered that it makes it difficult to get through. While the interaction between the middle aged man Wemyss, twenty-something (but much younger looking) Lucy and her maiden aunt is sort of interesting, the amount of detail is laborious.

But.

Without it, the latter half of the book wouldn’t be nearly as effective. Without wanting to exaggerate, the tension I felt during Wemyss’s dictatorial approach to elevenses was unlike anything I’ve ever read. It drags out painfully. There are other sections of the book that are more explicit in their portrayal of abusive power dynamics, but the sheer domesticity of this section was the most effective.

It’s difficult to pick out an extract but the whole thing just builds and builds in such a horrible way. I gather from the Wikipedia article that it’s based on von Armin’s own second marriage and that the book is a marked contrast in tone to her other works.

'Shall I pour out the tea?' she asked presently, preparing, then, to take the bull by the horns; for he remained standing in front of the fire smoking in silence. 'Just think,' she went on, making an effort to be gay, 'this is the first time I shall pour out tea in my——'

She was going to say 'My own home,' but the words wouldn't come off her tongue. Wemyss had repeatedly during the day spoken of his home, but not once had he said 'our' or 'your'; and if ever a house didn't feel as if it in the very least belonged, too, to her, it was this one.

'Not yet,' he said briefly.

She wondered. 'Not yet?' she repeated.

'I'm waiting for the bread and butter.'

'But won't the tea get cold?'

'No doubt. And it'll be entirely that fool's fault.'

'But——' began Lucy, after a silence.

'Buts again?'

'I was only thinking that if we had it now it wouldn't be cold.'

'She must be taught her lesson.'

Again she wondered. 'Won't it rather be a lesson to us?' she asked.

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim. Available from Vintage or as a public domain ebook from Project Gutenberg.