50 years old

On the 1st of August 2009, I loaded into my Duaflex II a roll of 620 Tri-X. The reason I mention that it was in August 2009 was that I'd specifically chosen that date. The date was chosen because the roll had expired in August 1959, making the film exactly 50 years out of date.
I shot the film whilst visiting my grandparents, whilst at my parents' home, whilst on holiday in Spain, and in Northumberland, around Lindisfarne.
I didn't get round to developing the film, for a while, and during that time my grandfather passed away, leaving the latent image of him still on the undeveloped film, like a ghost.
I wasn't sure whether I'd get any images at all, and was scared that I'd ruin the precious ghost by developing wrongly.
The other day, I eventually decided that enough was enough. I'd waited long enough to develop this roll (about 18 months) and that I was going to do it. Any development of film this old was going to be a guess, so I took the time on the TMax developer bottle for new TX, and added a bit more, for luck.
I developed for 7:30, agitating continually for the first 30s, then for 5s every 30s thereafter.
I fixed and washed the film, before finally putting in the wetting agent for the final rinse.
I pulled the reel from the tank, glistening, wet.
There was a moment, my heart in my mouth, where I thought that the old film was blank. I couldn't see anything but fog and wet film. But then! I noticed an image, on the outside of the reel. It was the image I'd worried about so much, and been so desperate to salvage. At that point, I would have been happy if the rest of the roll had been destroyed by bacteria or age, but as I gently pulled the tacky film from the reel, I could see more and more faint, blotchy images appearing; boats, castles, seasides. I was in luck.
I hung the negative to dry from a coathanger in my bathroom, my breath baited in case the old images decided to fade, as sometimes they do.
As soon as the film was no-longer dripping (but the emulsion was still tacky), I got that first image into the scanner, and saw my ghost, as clear as, well, a foggy day.

Once I'd scanned that image, I hung the film up again, to dry properly overnight. I had a record of my image, and I was happy.
Here is a link to the rest of the images. I hope you like them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157625740561427/