Not a good day…

After nearly a decade of pumping paper my faithful HP LaserJet 6L finally met it’s maker – though I have to admit, it did have a helping hand… Or two…

I have not been functioning fully for a good few weeks now and have been desperate to edit and print a final draft of my play so I could send it to a theatre in Southampton.

It has taken rather a lot of effort to get it done since reading and re-reading and correcting the endless typos that always appear from nowhere has been rather tiresome. I’m sure you’re familiar with the missing words your brain puts in for you when you’re reading, and the not so obvious they’re, their and there and the you’re and your. The problem is I’m such a perfectionist that it has to be write (sorry, right). Well at least 99.9% of it!

Anyway, having finally finished at 10pm last night (just in time for Heroes on BBC3, I hasten to add) I promised myself I would print it this morning and deliver it to Southampton personally (what with all the Royal Mail strikes) – No such luck.

Printing from my desktop computer (an Iyonix with RISC OS 5.11 for anyone in the slightest bit interested – no, not a PC and not a Mac either) failed to work due to problems with my network and the much older computer hosting the old printer via parallel cable, so I converted it to pdf, noticing yet another typo, re-did it, stuck it on a floppy disc (a what?) and fired up my a decade old dinosaur of laptop, (Dell Latitude CPt with windoze 95).

I need to point out that I’d already waited a whole week for Viking-Direct to deliver a new toner cartridge using their fast, free overnight delivery service (they did apologise and send a free box of biscuits) and I was getting desperate since I should have sent my play off last week.

Anyway, I’ve had numerous problems with my printer; it’s old, and hand-feeding paper for a 98 page document is only just bearable, providing the bloody paper doesn’t jam, which it did, and increasingly so. But the real frustration came when my lanquid laptop in its infinate wisdom decided to send hieroglyphics to the printer which wouldn’t stop even after I’d turned off and unplugged the printer and reset it. Can you see my frustration building?

I got up to page 4 (twice) and having been at this printing lark for well over an hour this morning and not being in the mildest of moods anyway, I was not best pleased when the paper jammed for what was to be the final time.

I have to admit I don’t really know what happened next. Something snapped somewhere and it’s never done that before. The result was my first fleetingly flying printer. Fortunately my office is not that big and there are no windows, so apart from a bit of scraped paintwork (Richard will be redecorating soon anyway) there was no major damage – except that is for the LaserJet. Suffice to say even the brand new £35 toner cartridge couldn’t be rescued.

I have to say, it’s had a remarkable effect on my mood. I really ought to throw laser printers a little more often! Anyway, I emailed the pdf to KallKwik and will pick up three copies of Kath and Kin first thing in the morning… Can’t think why I didn’t do that in the first place!