This week, I decided to sever my relationship with the Hewlett-Packard company and all its works, especially the Instant Ink subscription system. For more than eight years, HP has been tapping my bank account for eight to ten dollars each month, all the time claiming to save me money when the most cursory bit of arithmetic indicates that they’re lying, bigly.

But it was the HP website that pushed me over the edge. First, I was trying to change the frequency with which HP sent new ink cartridges; then, when that mission proved futile, I tried to cancel altogether. Round and round I went in a vicious circle of links, each taking me back to a page for opening a new account. I tried the chatbot, which sent me around the mulberry bush yet again, and called the help line only to be told to use the chatbot.

Finally I spotted a button that took me to a live chat with a human being, who actually — eventually! — cancelled my account. But not before wheedling at me to “update” my subscription, or buy a new model of HP printer, to which I replied “No, no, a thousand times no!” and “What part of No have I failed to convey?”

I’m sure my experience would have been different if I were American, or a business customer, but I am neither and I have no intention of changing either status to please a printer company.

So the HP LaserJet Pro 8720 is bound for the e-waste depot and I’ll buy something (anything!) else when I set up my desk again in Ottawa.

Next week will see me finally ending my relationship with the Stratford Concert Choir, dining out too often for the good of my digestion to please people who want to mark my departure, and packing the stuff that the movers won’t take. How did I accumulate four boxes of wooden matches as well as a fancy cigar lighter and a barbecue lighter? The cigar lighter was obviously Edmund’s, but all those matches look like me making sure I didn’t find myself stuck on some folk festival campsite with no way to light Edmund’s damnable Coleman stove.

I must also acquire some plastic bins for cleaning materials, which the movers will take the bins if I tape down the lids.)