More lab work. Seems to be I was spending at least one or two evenings a week doing photos. This time photocopying some photos for who knows what - their acronym has seven letters. (ah, youth organization, school committee - took me long enough to guess)
Made an excellent photo of Bosa in the lower corridor at school.
Tejka and Duca are in a fight, this time literally. It came to blows.
Went with mom downtown, finally bought some light jacket, which is destined to be my second skin for the next year.
The fountain (aka kitchen sink) in DC-99 works now. Bukac and I shot a couple of spools (his camera is junk, the trigger is bad) on yet another piece of that traffic competition, then went to the club and developed them. His two turned out bad, don't know how, we made fresh čorba of each kind. Couldn't find "Acqualung" by Jethro Tull, Pop should have it, I need it for the "Can not" (most of the movie should go under "Beware of darkness" by Harrison, then the introductory riff shold crush him in the end).
On 24th good fun with Tejka at school (all forgotten?). Slavka is now a redhead! Went all to a systematic checkup, medical. It's once a year, ever since obdanište. They just check our growth, measure the lung capacity, blood pressure, listen with a stetoscope, that kind of thing. And take a good look, trying to see, as early as possible, signs of anything that would be hard to cure later.
One cute kid, 4th-5th grade now, come with her mom (she works with mine) and was amazed with my corner. So immediately she started making her own at home, publicly claiming that she's following me. Who spoils the youth?
The sneeze is back, it's killing me.
On 26th the impossible happened: D.M. and Višnja finally came to me to see the movie(s). Yes, her cat is an exact copy of blaženko. The mess in the room was carefully prepared. There was some chocolate on the small table. "Say something sad so I don't laugh like crazy in front of the camera" and I say "popadija" (orthodox priest's wife), and we all laugh like crazy. She brought me the Beatles, though not Sgt Pepper, but rather the 63-66 compilation. Never mind, they were good from the start, only they got much better later. The atmosphere was great, and I just wrote down that it's impossible to write it down, perhaps a good recording of everything would do. Though I doubt that, there was so much in the facial expressions (body language wasn't recognized yet, just a few bits were known). They left so she can get to town by 19, said it's vitally important. So I'm late again.
And eventually I asked the next day.
- go ahead
- was the rush yesterday because you were going for a date?
- no, why do you ask?
- because I want to be with you
- really?
- from day one, really.
- I lied. I do have a boyfriend, though we didn't meet last night. We thought ten minutes would be enough, but when we got there we were seven minutes late.
- so he's not a student
- no. how do you know?
- he'd have waited the academic fifteen minutes.
And then it was the regular chat as if nothing at all have happened. I was trembling just a bit.
In other news, today the historian kicked Bajče out to get a haircut, and Oli Boj for no obvious reason (maybe doing makeup during class?), saying "A princess! And later when you ask her, asking her or the calf bosnian it's the same. Actually the calf can at least do mooo mooo and she doesn't know even that".
In the evening Tejka came to help me in the lab. Her fight with mom is making steady progress.
On 27th there was a series of fuckups. Š. (mentioned recently) now has a band, and they're playing in a village at the border, and wants to borrow the flash. The only flash I know belongs to the club, and then Lazar goes mad about where's the flash. Then those two guys come to develop some of their huge prints of acts, and in the end pour the fixer into a wrong bottle without relabeling. Then I develop something and get twenty meters of blank (there's a black and white blank, if you didn't know). I becunted like an earthworm (popizdeo kao glista - can't translate better, say "got mad as hell", but it doesn't apply, I don't believe in hell either). Would have killed him if he was at hand.
Duda's dad was in the club (he's Lazar's brother) and she didn't lie about her age - she's 8th grade now, having trouble with maths.
Ok, nothing, went home and developed those photocopies. Dad helped some. He's traveling to USSR soon, some agricultural delegation.
On 28th I took the regula to school and made a lot of shots. Developed in the afternoon and it looked great. The third girl felt cold (nice cloudy light, excellent) and stood, hand in hand, and said "cold hands, warm love, check...", but when I reached for her hands, she said "...with others.". Ouch, yeah.
Ivanka started making passes at me this day. I didn't take that well, considering her a wannabe girl, not up there yet, and thought I wouldn't like to be seen with her. I guess that with all of my failures I still tried hard to keep some level and kept trying with the prettier and more fancy girls. I'll change my mind about her only much much later, when we get into our fifties and beyond, and it becomes too late.
Lacking a real dark room, I took the darkest blue sticker sheet (aka "selfglueing wallpaper" as it was called commercially) and covered the bathroom window with it. So for negatives I'd just put two trays on the washer, and mull the negative through one then the other for a while, by hand. I did have that east german developing box but didn't really like it, that distancer tape was too rigid. For positives I'd take over the kitchen - put the enlarger on the stove, trays on the counter, and kept the sink half full of water, that's where the finished prints would sit until it was the time to dry them. The yellow-greenish light was hung on the upper cabinet. The kitchen being practically a niche attached to the dining/living room, the thick curtain was just about enough to keep it dark when the lights were off and TV on. The TV was still in my room, though, but later it went to this room, and never came back.
This batch I was mostly using Ilford PanF, the 18 DIN (or was it 21?), which I developed in FR4, which was Fotokemika's positive developer. This is about the time when I experimented even more, and realized that the factory recipes aren't exactly a law, that you risk only the material you bought, and that emulsion is emulsion... I finally got proper contrast, though not the dreaded lack of tones. Just got properly bright highlights and deep enough shades, with decent shades in between. With the diffuse light from mostly above (the school walls are rather dark, covered with decades of soot, and weren't too bright originally), worked just as I hoped it would.
Slavka and the little Z. from first grade got the task to locate Š. and retrieve the flash. Accomplished that on satirday, 29th. As for those photocopies, the director of the school said I should be paid and to talk with the secretary. I said three dinars apiece, and when we counted the prints, there were more than fifty of them, wow. Wish I said more. Still, a windfall.
So I cleared up the accounts with the club (flash is back), made some business, simmered the little Z. a bit, on the musical waltzed with Dragana (we were the second, first couple were Beštara and Bilja), made a show there. The only thing left to do is to send Morava's cartoon to be developed. That's no hurry, not urgent and not mine.