Storm Éowyn and Printer Problems
Sir/Madam,
I write to you amidst the tempestuous embrace of Storm Éowyn, which has swept across the UK with all the fury of a toddler denied pudding. Roof tiles have taken flight, wheelie bins roam the streets like disoriented Daleks, and my neighbours trampoline has relocated to a nearby tree. Yet, amid this meteorological mayhem, it is my home printer that has truly pushed me to the brink of despair.
While the storm hurls torrents of rain against my windows, my printer sits smugly in its corner, steadfast in its refusal to communicate with my laptop. Storm Éowyn may have upended half the garden, but it pales in comparison to the chaos wrought by my futile attempts to print a simple boarding pass. It claims it’s "out of paper" when I can clearly see the tray brimming. It demands magenta ink to print in black and white. It is, in every sense, the perfect metaphor for modern existence: unnecessarily complicated, utterly unhelpful, and prone to catastrophic meltdowns at the slightest provocation.
I have often wondered, in quieter times, whether printers are powered not by electricity but by the collective anguish of their users. If so, mine must be the most energised appliance in Britain. Perhaps Storm Éowyn has knocked some celestial wifi signal loose, and now printers everywhere are conspiring with the weather to sow maximum confusion.
The radio advises us to secure loose items outdoors, yet I suspect the true danger lies indoors, in the form of these ink-guzzling tyrants. While others wrestle with felled trees and flooded basements, I remain trapped in a bitter standoff with a machine whose sole purpose seems to be thwarting me.
Is it too much to ask, dear Editor, for a printer that simply prints? Or failing that, for Storm Éowyn to whisk this wretched device away, preferably to a distant land where it can ponder its crimes? Let the storm take the garden gnomes, the parasol, even the barbecue, but I beg it to spare me from another night of negotiating with a printer that appears to have joined the rebellion against humanity.
Yours in exasperation,
Dorcas Pumblethwack
(Currently barricading the study from further meteorological and mechanical anarchy)