THE SCANNER WHO BECAME HIS OWN HEADSTONE

It was a nice, quiet do, just like "Barry" would've wanted. There was just me and a couple of toasters and that old jug-kettle he used to hang out with. He was like that, you know - very down-to-earth and unpretentious - you'd never find him hanging around wine-bars with flashy-lookin' computer peripherals.

I thought the vicar's speech was lovely. But when he asked if anyone wanted to share their memories of "Barry" I had such a big lump in my throat I couldn't say anything. All those great times we shared together - the old comics and the pulp novels; the whacky pritstik collages; the antiquarian maps and the bodily parts we used to copy...

*Choke* I miss ya, buddy.



When "Barry" was terminally ill recently and I...I had to take him to the electrical-goods hospice, 'cause we...'cause we couldn't, y'know, nurse him properly at home...(sorry about this; I'm still a little choked up)...I briefly speculated about an after-life for electrical retail-goods. Something that didn't occur to me at the time was the idea that there might be a White Goods Wheel of Karma, that household items could be, well, reincarnated...

In one of those weird twists of The Tao my sister-in-law just randomly gave me her old scanner today (she'd won a new one in a raffle!) w/out even knowing about my recent, uh...bereavement. And, well - blow me down wiv a fevver if it wasn't a Umax Astra 2100U - the next model up from "Barry". It's like...fuck, it's like they could be twins. Quite remarkable, really.

So I plugged it in using the old leads and it fired up straight away; didn't even need to download new drivers. Ha!

Well, I think me and "Terry" are gonna be great pals!