Meet My Desk: Lucy

Tuesdays are still “Meet My Desk” days, even if I very almost forgot until around 2pm and had to wait for the sun to come out so I could take a photo.  The sunlight is very important for photos, mostly because my camera loves to make everything very faintly blurred unless the sun is out.  It’ll want a blood sacrifice next, mark my words.

This time round we’re meeting my Kindle, Lucy.

I can’t remember off the top of my head how old she is, but she’s definitely younger than Sixteen.  This amuses me for many reasons, along with her name--both her name and Sixteen’s are a massive in-joke for me that takes an explanation that always makes me sound like an idiot.

In short, they’re both named after characters from the Assassin’s Creed series, and Lucy is so named because she connects to Sixteen and he can share memories (or at least eBooks) with her.  I also happen to like the pairing of Sixteen and Lucy (which puts me in the minority in the fandom I suspect)...  And I did say it made me sound like an idiot, didn’t I?

Lucy is a quiet, steady presence in my life, and she’s responsible for two things: my introduction to indie/self-publishing and ebooks, and the existence of Lydia (who you’ll meet at some point).  Right now I can’t quite work out which one is more expensive.  She’s my trusted carrier of entertainment (and the occasional spot of heartbreak) in her exquisite coat of Tesco Kindle cover with comfortingly fuzzy lining.  I talk about buying her a shiny, more book-ish cover sometimes, but honestly I think purple suits her.

She travels to Nottingham with me too, usually so I can make ridiculous and enthusiastic noises about whatever I’m reading to my friends (who by now probably want to beat me to death with her) and on our most recent trip we made a horrific discovery together:-

New Kindles, at least in Waterstones, are black, not grey.

This has a strange, slimming effect on the overall design that wasn’t lost on me (or Lucy).  I held her up to the display model, end to end and side to side, and although I know they’re both the same size the black one remained resolutely smaller-looking.

I spent five minutes clutching her to my chest and muttering “it’s okay, you’re not fat” while my friends made sympathetic noises and did their best to reassure her.  (Remember what I said about my fellow writers being odd?)  I think she feels better now--and I really do think that the grey is a much nicer colour, personally--but I won’t be letting her anywhere near this post in case she remembers and becomes depressed.

I agonised for months before I bought her and spent ages wondering if her existence would impact my buying of traditional books (unfortunately for my bookcases, no) or if I’d simply never use her (she’s always by my side), but in the end I wouldn’t be without her.

Next time: I still have no idea who I’ll be writing about. Sorry.