Printers

My printer at home only works if I stare at it. The conclusions I draw from this is either it likes me and wants me close at all times or that it is distracting attention from the dastardly attack the toaster is planning behind my back.

It is one of those HP all-in-one printers that cost £100 three years ago, and now presumably comes free with a magazine. It is shaped like a breezeblock and can withstand both cats using it as a springboard to the window-sill, and me treating every paper jam as a tug of war. I have so far been impressed with the printer’s agreeable nature, but things are set to change.

I cannot have a printer that only works if I hover nearby like an anxious parent.

Take today. Today I wanted to print out chapter’s four to six for a final read-through to see if there were any oddities hanging around that needed to be pounced upon from a high height. Yet already there are rituals – I cannot just stack the printer with paper. I have to rifle through the A4 pages first in the hope they won’t all attempt to sail through the printer’s mechanisms in one go – the theory being ‘air between the pages’ will help. I then can only stack in around 30 pages at a time, as too many or too few will have the same effect – the printer will dramatically choke to death in splutters and wheezes like a hammy actor. Once stacked, I then have to rest my hand gently on the top page, like I am feeling for a pulse, as the printer goes into action. This seems to calm it down and stops it from a paper feeding frenzy.

Once the printer is in motion I cannot walk away. Walking away means acceptance that the printer will do its job and actually print without needing me as a reluctant audience. If I walk away I shall come back to find the printer choking to death, and the computer flashing an error message. I shall then find that whatever I wanted printed will have missed a few pages in spite. Yet if I stay near, it prints perfectly.

Maybe it is lonely? Maybe I don’t give it enough love and care. I mean – do I ever really align the pages from the test print like you are supposed to when you insert new ink cartridges? I bang the Hoover against it on (ahem) rare occasions and I let it get too hot next to the radiator. I haven’t clicked into ‘printer tools’ for ages. I rarely press its buttons, so it seems.

Now I feel sorry for it.

When Technology Goes Bad

Today the sky swirled with grey and the greyness leaked into my mood like old paint water. I nodded on the tube, lulled by the clickety-clack of the wheels in motion and the fact I had a seat all to myself. I came home and ate, and tried to write, and my words ran out before… yes, just like that.

So this evening shouldn’t have been the night I tried to install a wireless printer. What is it with these things? Why are the instructions so obtuse? The first thing I had to do was move a little yellow bit of plastic from one slot to another slot. No explanations, no clue what on earth that means in printer world, just a grown up version of matching shapes. And from then on it all spiralled down – Ethernet cables that wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do (work, mostly), wireless not actually being wireless, things hidden behind settings panels hidden within small print navigation, CD-installing software that doesn’t install, printers that don’t recognise they are printers (what would it be instead – a sheep?). I appear to have the first printer in the world with multiple personality disorder.

I gave up after nearly 2 hours of fiddling around, and felt very small that I haven’t managed to complete the set up. I think my brain is too frazzled from grey-infected Monday. It didn’t help either that it was all for mum, who is now increasingly thinking that technology is all a Rather Bad Idea when I want to say no it is good… when it works, that is.

And now before I know it, it is 10pm and that means bedtime. I’m far too tired and grumpy for anything else. But then that just means work tomorrow, and then another bedtime, and then work and then bed… I always get like this when working full-time and not writing. The days just meld into one. Maybe it didn’t help either that I tried to do a bit more on chapter five at lunchtime and me and the printed pages just looked at each-other with no understanding, like teenagers and parents. Maybe it doesn’t help that I feel stressed and tired. I feel I need a day of just hiding under a duvet.