reading a blob column seems slow

[Tim Dudgeon]

I have a table that has a blob column. When the select statement 
includes that column it runs much slower than if it is not included, and 
this seems quite a bit slower than for other databases (oracle, mysql, 
hsql).
The time taken seems to be when reading the blob from the ResultSet.
Is there any recommended way to read from a blob (to get a String) so as 
to maximise performance? I'm using derby.storage.pageSize=32768, but 
otherwise than that default values.

Thanks
Tim