Fun & Famous

I am having a fight with my great love Hema

For someone who is not at her absolute easiest in front of a camera, it is quite impressive that there are 20 fist-thick photo books in my house where my entire life is documented. My father used to be inseparable from his camera and my mother was an extremely skilled photo gluer. At one point, she even had her own room for it, which everyone without a hint of irony called “the photo gluing room.”.

There she would spend hours selecting, cutting, gluing photos, and adding fun captions. Later, my father took this over and he filled page after page with dozens of photos, neatly in order and glued into almost artistic collages. Really, they are masterpieces.

I also like to make such a book after a nice trip or vacation. I just don't print anything anymore and don't glue anything in; I do that with Hema's photo software. I love Hema. Lucky me, I live next to a Hema (my wifi works in some places in the store and I think that's such a wonderfully great idea. My own wifi in Hema!) and I actually go there at least once a day to buy food at the Hemarkt. The manager cheerfully waves at me (“Hello neighbor!”) and on weekends, everyone who works there knows exactly what time it is when I come in around 1:00 PM in my jogging suit (“Had a nice evening again, neighbor?”). Really, it's so cozy.

But what I want to get to is the following. Last year my father turned 70, we celebrated that with a lunch with loved ones and I hired a photographer for beautiful photos with the idea of making an album from them. And I wanted to do the same with the photos from my recent trips. Now, making such a book is quite a task. I am extremely precise when it comes to creating the perfect layout, and all in all, I spend a calm week on it. Lately, it has been busy and due to a scarcity of time and an abundance of other things and okay okay, a tiny bit of laziness here and there, it took an endless amount of time to create my father's photo book. I did indeed start a few months ago, I think I was just over halfway, and I intended to finish it after my trip and immediately start on a new photo book of my trip..

So last week, I unsuspectingly opened the photo book creation program (that's a word) only to experience a wave of panic mixed with frustration and ultimately pure anger. “Unfortunately, you can no longer use this software. Hema photo service has been renewed! Click here to download.” Okay, breathe in, breathe out, they have of course done it in such a way that ALL your previous photo books are still usable and can be completed.

BUT THAT IS NOT THE CASE.

As Jan Smit's mother would say: “EVERYTHING IS GONE.” And even worse; starting over is NOT POSSIBLE either, because “Due to a technical malfunction, downloading the Mac software is not possible.” WHATTHEF***?!?!??!?!?

Furious. That is what I am. And I have lost my previous photo books and I can't make a new photo book for the time being. Now there are indeed other programs and I have tried them, but they are all so excruciatingly slow and crash all the time when they try to load my photos. Really, I am so intensely pissed off. By the way, I am not alone in this. The Consumers“ Association receives dozens of heartbreaking stories daily from old grandmas who have been making books for months or people who were documenting the first year of their newborn child, that kind of thing. Hema says ”sorry,' but does not solve the problem further, so we don't get anything out of that.

I still love Hema, because such a long love as we had does not just fade away. This is just a serious dent in the relationship and I foresee that we will need many therapy sessions to come out of this better and stronger than ever. Hema, don't let me down. I beg you.