From out of the guts of the machine

Here is related the true story of a man who rescued my printer from a wasted life of peripheral redundancy. It is written as an unlikely poem although almost every word of it is nearly true:

That’s me on the phone and getting into a bit of a stinker

Trying to get Comet or Epson to do a warranty repair on my printer

I finally ascertained an engineer who would have a look locally

I checked the address and mumbled about my bad luck with printers vocally

The centre on Purley Way didn’t look all that modern

It was the sort of industrial unit you might expect to find in Waddon

The receptionist was polite and called down the engineer

Apparently casual dress is not an inhibiting factor in that career

We talked about the main issue which was that the paper was not grabbing

He went back up stairs got a pair of big pair of tweezers, a stip of cupboard and proceeded to shove that it

He looked like a surgeon fishing around for a bullet

Imagine my surprise when he located an old pencil jammed in the guts of the machine and out he did pull it

A moment of twinkle; a birthing; a miracle

But it was hard for the receptionist not to be cynical

‘That’ll do it everytime’ she quipped as the pencil hit the desktop

I thought about saying ‘Oh wow, I was looking for that!’ and then I thought, ‘no stop’.

It is better to say nothing and act like engineers pull pencils from the guts of printers every day maybe they should

And, well, if they talk about me when I am gone all well and good.