The time when I tried to sell a book

In my bid to secure a new MacBook Air, I’ve been selling my worldly possessions. My sealed Warhammer - sold! Pokemon cards I collected as a kid - gone (along with the childhood memories). A near-complete, near-mint collection of The Walking Dead novels - see ya! A Star Wars book for £1.50 - the fucking bane of my life.

Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (Hardback)

Good condition — £3.00

The book sat nestled amongst my other items on Vinted, watching as they all flew off the shelf, leaving it with only a handful of favourites. A week later, I dropped the price down to £2.00 in a bid to snag a purchase from one of the favouritees. Not long after, I received a message:

“Will you take £1.50?”

“[Let’s not squabble over 50p.] It’s a deal”

Another thing sold. Another small chip away at the mountainous cost of a new laptop.

1 Guy 2 Printers

I wrap the book in bubble wrap, put it in a postage bag, and take it to work. Lunchtime arrives, and I skip gaily to Morrisons InPost locker. InPost is fucking great. You scan the QR code, the locker opens, you drop off the package, job done! And all in under a minute. It couldn’t be any easier. It’s modern magic. #ad.

I open the message on Vinted and scan the QR cod- wait, where’s the QR code? Fuck sake, it’s a print-at-home label. Who has a blog that no one reads and no printer? This guy (me). A week before this, I’d visited the very same InPost locker, only to realise I needed an Evri locker, and then spent an hour driving around Lincoln to find one. There’s a lesson that I should have learned then, and one that I likely won’t even now - read the message before you leave the house.

Having tried to style out the fact that I walked up to the locker, stared at it, and left, while a one-person queue had formed behind me, I tried to think ‘Who actually owns a printer in this, the year of our Lord, 2026?’. As I returned to the office, I stumbled upon the holy grail. As chance would have it, our office has not one, but two printers! It was too late to use them now, but the excitement was killing me, and I eagerly awaited the next day, when I could finally print my label.

Like a kid at Christmas, I awoke the following day knowing that the £1.50 would soon be mine. Lunchtime arrived again, and I sought out the printers. Both of them were disconnected and collecting dust in the corner, so I found a cable for the first one and plugged it in.

The lights began to blink, and I tried to connect to it with my phone. I needed an app. I installed the app, but the printer wasn’t connected to the network, and I didn’t have the wifi password to hand. After 15 minutes of fannying around trying to figure out how to get it connected, my colleague said:

“That printer doesn’t have any toner”.

Great. Printer number 2 it is then.

This thing is a fucking unit. Now, I’m piss weak, but I didn’t expect to nearly put my back out trying to pick it up.

I walked it awkwardly across the room, tipping it side to side, making a racket while another person in the office was on a call. I plugged it in beneath my desk. It fired up and made the dreadful sound of a Transformer getting pegged without lube. The printer automatically connected to the network and my phone picked it up! Excitedly, I opened the label on my phone and tapped “print”. Nothing happened, and the printer disappeared as an option. I tried again, because whenever something doesn’t work, I find it best to do the same thing again in the hope that it magically fixes itself. It didn’t work. Not for wanting to buck the trend, I tried doing the same thing for a third time and, quelle surprise, it did sweet fuck all. Then I started to smell what was clearly some kind of electrical fire. I’m guessing it was the amassed dust warming up, but not one for chancing a full-on office fire for the sake of a one-pound-fifty book, I gave up. I unplugged the behemoth and walked it back to the corner of the room.

2 days down. 2 non-function printers. 0 postage labels. 1 sad me.

After Googling “who can do a print in Lincoln?”, I decided to rely on the old faithful.

Having fun isn’t hard, when you have a library card (but less fun when you leave it at home)

As chance would have it, I needed to return the kids' books to the library at the weekend. And not a chance too soon. There are only so many times you can read Charlie & Lola before wanting to cave in your own skull.

The weekend arrives, and we set sail for the library. It’s a turn of phrase, I don’t live on a boat and the library isn’t at sea. I don’t know why I said it. I packed the library books into a bag and grabbed my chunkier wallet that holds my coins to cover the cost of the successful print job that awaits me. As I set off, my little card wallet waved goodbye to me from the window, like a wife waving goodbye to her husband as he set off for war, but it’s me and a library.

The library is only around the corner, and the girls wanted to ride their scooters there. My youngest rarely rides hers, so she does that awkward thing where she scoots for a few metres, then jumps off. My eldest is the opposite. She speeds around like Ken Block (god rest him), weaving left and right, and looking back at us two instead of where she’s headed. It’s the perfect anxiety-inducing family walk!

10 minutes in the scoot, we discovered a ladybird family on the path. Initially, the girls were enamoured by them, until one ladybird started walking towards my eldest and she screamed that it was chasing her. ‘Chase’ is a pretty extreme descriptor for something that walks 2cm/second, but alas, we bailed on the family and continued on our way. After 30 minutes of stop-starting, we finally got to the library.

The first task - drop the books off.

The second task - let the girls choose the new books while I awkwardly try to read the poster about printing stuff without drawing any attention to myself, like I was planning on printing the purest grot that I didn’t want anyone to look at.

It didn’t take long for the girls to choose their books, and now it was time to scan them out. I thumb my pocket for my wallet, and my heart sinks. My library card is in my other wallet (that’s a callback). Not wanting to beg to borrow ‘Mog’s Christmas Calamity’ in Spring, which, by the way, spoiler-alert, ends with Mog burning down a house at Christmas, presents along with it, which is guaranteed to traumatise any 5-year-old, I chanced opening the app on my phone. It worked, and it had the barcode I needed to check out the books.

Result!

Now it’s time for the grand finale where we finally see this Vinted label printed.

2FA is great until you’re on a library PC with no phone signal or access to Wi-Fi.

I asked the receptionist how I could go about printing the label, despite having spent the last 5 minutes snatching secret glimpses at the poster.

“Just scan the QR code, and it’ll come through to me”

I scan the code for Princh. It opens the browser, and I stand staring at a white page.

I have no signal.

I open my Wi-Fi settings, see an open network, and try connecting to it, to no avail. Getting agitated, I shuffle awkwardly out of the way of an elderly couple who are trying to sign their books out, and I accidentally tread on the foot of my youngest daughter who’d done that awesome little trick of silently sneaking behind me like she was trying to cosplay my shadow. I shake my phone to try to catch a rogue ray of signal, but it’s having none of it.

Roughly 5 minutes pass (it’s probably closer to 2, and felt like a week) before I retreat to the receptionist, tail between my legs. She anticipates what I’m about to ask, and says:

“If your phone isn’t working, you can always use one of the PCs to print it instead”.

All is not lost!

“I just need your pin”

Another part of me dies.

“[Do I look like a guy who has his shit in order and knows his pin?! I’m carrying a hole-ridden bag for life, I’m wearing a stained video game t-shirt, I’ve just stepped on my own kid, and I’m wearing running shoes to ease the pain of my gout-ridden toe, all whilst furiously thumbing my phone screen to find a shred of fucking signal that I pay a ridiculous amount of money a month for.] I don’t have it, sorry”

“That’s okay! I’ll log you in as a guest”

I sit down at the computer, open up the browser, and log into my email account.

Incorrect password

I try again

Incorrect password

I mean, it’s fucking correct, I made it! My blood now reaching a simmer, I checked the password app on my phone and it matched what I was typing into the computer. ‘Am I being Derren Browned?’, I thought, until remembering that I’d moved everything over to 1Password. I checked 1Password, and there it was, in all its over-secure glory.

I keyed in the 30-character password while getting acquainted with every facet of the keyboard.

Please authorise your login using the Authenticator app

I open my phone to check the app. It’s not installed and Jonny no signal here can do sweet fuck all about it. At this point I’m raging internally, my blood is boiling. My kids are bored shitless. My eldest keeps looking at what the old chap next to me is doing on his computer. I still don’t know what it was, but he looked incredibly sheepish, so I can only assume he was ordering a new wife from the dark web or something.

I notice another lifeline.

Would you like to authenticate via another method?

I chose my Gmail account. (They don’t call me Two-emails McClung for nothing). I log into my account, with the correct password.

Please verify your account by pressing ‘20’ in the YouTube app

YouTube won’t open because of course it won’t. The final part of me dies.

My phone is an expensive heap of defunct shit. I shut down the computer (accidentally, I was supposed to just log off) and marched out of the library, but not before telling the receptionist it was “no good” and that “modern technology is great in practise until you’re somewhere without internet access”. She didn’t know what I was banging on about, and nodded politely.

I stomped away seething. The girls both found some gusto and we got home in a decent time. I got in the house and checked my phone

YouTube alert: someone has tried to log into your account

“Is that so, Google? I wish you’d fucking told me 20 minutes ago!”

Fuck Vinted.

Fuck Star Wars.

Fuck the MacBook.

Shortly after the library visit, Vinted automatically cancelled the order. The book went unsold, and I never got my £1.50.

Not all stories have a fairy tale ending, I’m afraid. That’s just the reality of life. But I do still want the MacBook, actually, so does anyone want a copy of Star Wars: Light of the Jedi (Hardback)? - £1.00 ono.