Melissa Kite’s fraught relationship with printers

Blind panic grips me at the thought that all over Britain there are people sitting in cosy home offices operating gizmos with ease. I imagine I am the only person alive who can’t print out something from an email without getting in my car and driving to a small shop with no name on Streatham High Road, where a monosyllabic gentleman in Islamic dress will allow me to log on to one of his ancient reconditioned desktop computers and send the document I want to print to his printer, and who will then slap the few stray sheets down on the counter with a look of disdain and ask me for £9.50.

I imagine that everyone else is sitting in nice, well-ordered studies with the latest MacBook Pros sending documents of which they need hard copies — and no doubt photographs taken with digital cameras and iPhones too — to their wireless printers with a flick of the Return key, probably as they sip home-brewed cappuccino from gleaming Gaggias and nibble, if they are David Cameron, sandwiches made with bread forged in the latest bread-baking machines (although how the Prime Minister has time to knock up a multi-seeded cob is clearly a matter for a full public inquiry).