A Family thing

Dad had similar beginnings as he tells it here..

"Some of my first memories come from around 1946-7 when we used to visit my grandparents in their house on the High Street, Wroughton. On one such visit I remember myself and my brother Chris finding an old box Brownie camera. It was minus a back, but we found another that would fit, this was secured by means of an elastic garter, stretched around the camera, sometimes obscuring the lens.
 The camera had "I" and "T" settings and also a pull out strip with three apertures on it, we had no idea what these were for, or how to use them. It was produced regularly at holiday time, and one film or occasionally TWO films were exposed during the week. Subject matter predictably, always depicted members of the family in varying locations at Weymouth. "Mum on the beach, with the kids", "Dad with Pier in background", etcetera.
 Pictorial work would be greeted with, "don’t waste one on that", from Mum. Of course in those days it was only eight pictures to the roll, so one had to be choosy, their choice did not match mine unfortunately.

My first experience of photo processing, can be traced from when those early films from the Box Brownie. For film processing, we used “The Statue Fruit Stores”, on the esplanade in Weymouth, but if we brought one home with us, Dad would do it.
 He would take me into the bathroom, equipping himself with the chemicals and the "safelight".
 The "safelight" was modified (My Father often "modified" things), from the battery powered lamp of his bicycle, with some red sweet paper over the lens. The Developer was poured into an old pudding basin mounted on the lavatory seat, and with Dad kneeling on the Bathroom floor in the dim red light, the film was "see-sawed" through, until the negative image became visible, we never bothered much about time and temperature, as you could see what was happening by use of the safe light, just. A rinse in the sink, and then the Hypo fixer was put in the pudding basin and the film passed through once again until it had "cleared", by which time I would be fed up from blundering about in the gloom and getting told off for not holding the light still. The prints were done on Kodak contact paper, 25 sheets in a pack, this meant placing the negative in contact with the sensitised paper, the pictures thus produced, were the same size as the negative. This was acceptable in those days as the negatives were 2.25 x 2.25 inches at least, in size.

To prepare for an exposure, a transparent red mask, to make the white border of the print, was placed into the printing frame, the negative was placed, and shiny” side downward, against the mask and the glass of the frame, the sensitised paper also shiny (emulsion) side down, against the negative The back of the frame would then be fitted and clipped down. All these operations were done by the dim illumination of the safelight, no easy task with me holding it.
 For an exposure to be acceptable, the paper has to be exposed to a light bulb, at the correct distance and for the correct number of seconds. These values were usually discovered as I remember, by trial, error and annoyance.
 The bathroom would be blacked out, by a blanket over the window, the problem we had working in there, was that the light switch was outside of the door. This meant that when we had loaded the printing frame, we then had to cover it over with something, to keep out the light, whilst I went outside and closed the door. When I was outside, Dad would give the order to turn the light on and off. We had no clock with which to count the seconds, so Dad would estimate:-
The procedure ran as follows,
  Load frame.
  Cover it over.
  I go out on the landing, close door.
  Dad calls,"ON..1..2..3..4..5....OFF.
  He covers up the frame.
  I re-enter bathroom.
  Develop and fix print.
 Whilst the light was on, he would be holding the printing frame at a suitable distance from the light bulb. I don't think the distance was ever constant, as witnessed by the varied results we used to get.
 Of course this does not take into consideration, the number of times that I must have opened the door too soon, or we put the print into the fixer first by mistake."