The highlight of my day

I hate the sound of dry felt tip pens on paper. In fact hate is a bit weak; abhor, loathe, despise, I am perhaps even phobic. I don't know why or how it started but I literally can't bear it. If I accidentally find myself writing with a dry felt tip pen my instant reaction is to jump away in horror and contort my body into shapes of disgust, like some people do if they accidentally find a maggot in an apple they are eating or a severed finger in a crisp packet. Everyone has something they can't bare and this is my nails down a blackboard, my cracking of knuckles, my Bono.

Once when I was at work I had to leave the room because one of my colleagues was labelling up an envelope with an old marker pen; my eyes began to water and I excused myself immediately for fear I might vomit.

So, it was to my horror that a few days ago during rush hour, weighed down by bags, unable to move, I sat on the Piccadilly line next to a husband and wife couple who were trying to establish which one of the many highlighters they had in their bag worked.

Dry pen after dry pen was dragged across scrap paper as they tried to draw attention to some sentence or other. They were probably in their sixties and they had more highlighter pens than an average office. This succession and repetition of neon lasted my entire journey, why would they have so many dried up marker pens, and what was so important that they must highlight it now?

My eyes began to water, of all the people they could sit next to, they had to sit next to me, probably the only person on the entire tube network with an irrational fear of dry nibs. I scowled at them as I turned up my ipod, but the scrapping noise penetrated even that. I dug my fingers into the palm of my hands but the pain did nothing to dull the actual pain of being there. They must have wondered why I was tutting and scowling and listening to Canned Heat so loudly. Little did they know or understand what they were putting me through. I gagged twice and the second time coincided with their joy of finding a working highlighter.

I shuddered and huffed and alighted at Finsbury park.