The Green Pen

It was a dangerously exciting day. The worst of the worst. For a few short minutes, something was lost that might never have been found again. Angst rippled across the mind, as a green pen fell and rolled away into oblivion. What would happen without the green pen? Worse, thanks to the mismatched pen top procedure, first instigated by Hannah the Great in the middle of the last decade, a red pen would currently need to be sacrificed to make up the pair. What horror! The worst part of travelling to people's houses to teach is that you can lose things, compensate for the loss, and then unexpectedly get them back again just when you had given up.

You might say, "It's only a pen! It's only a pen!", and you would be right. It is only a pen. However, a pen is mightier than any sword, and the green pen is the most valuable of all. The green pen, the contemporary replacement for the red marking pen of tradition, is the mythical extension to the soul promised long ago by Plato, Archimedes, and the Buddha. There can be no life with a lost green pen, once you have become used to it...

However, the green pen was finally found, and the world saved one more time. The storm in a teacup was poured into the plug hole of infinity, and everything began again. What was more important, the tutoring session with the GCSE student or losing a trivial green pen? (Speaking in jest) Of course the pen! The pen! There can be no life while losing pens! Losing things is terrible. It's a sign of obsessive compulsion, I know, but sometimes whole mornings, afternoons, evenings or even nights can be lost in looking for lost things, while knowing that no rest will be found until the world is back to rights. Pens, watches, gold bullion, pieces of paper, bookmarks... Bookmarks... The rest, when it comes, is all the sweeter...

One day, there will have to be an extremely boring Quirky Muffin about bookmarks. It's down on the list.

O.