‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ Maya Angelou’s assertion is true, of course, but then I bet she never had to create a book cover for kindle, then put it into a pdf, then convert it back into a jpg just to get it to upload.  And don’t even get me started on formatting and converting the damn book. Telling the story suddenly seems like the easy bit.

It’s not that I don’t like technology – I love it.  It’s just that technology doesn’t like me.  Take now, for example.  I’m typing this with an irritating pop up floating in front of my face that, somehow, I have managed to invite onto my computer, despite blocking all pop ups on my internet security.  And no matter what I do, it won’t go away.  If I walk past a printer in the office, the front falls off.  If I go to use the photocopier, without fail, it jams.  I’ve been barred from even strolling past the local Curry’s.

If someone gives me instructions to follow, to set up a new piece of kit – be it computer, phone, tablet – and they follow these instructions with any of the following phrases: a child could do it or it’s so user friendly or any variation thereupon, then I know I’m in big trouble and within minutes I have wrecked said new gadget.

But with three separate written guides and the advice of an experienced friend, you’d have thought that just this once I could do something as simple as upload a book to kindle within a reasonable amount of time.  Not three days – and I’m not talking three normal days, I’m talking three long, morning until midnight days. With emails flying backwards and forwards between me and the amazon tech team.  And cups of tea – lots of them.  I suppose I ought to come clean about the swearing too.  And the damn thing still wouldn’t go on.

So if you see me walking down the street with a funny, stiff kind of walk, you’ll know that there’s an untold story in me just desperate to get out, if only I could find a computer with its guard down long enough so I could sneak in and relieve myself.