Five Pencils

He has forgotten to bring out a pen and so he buys a packet of five pencils. He sits in a café and begins a short story about two people who are walking along a cliff path on a summer evening in the south of England, discussing literature and probably sex. The first pencil is soon blunt, and of course he does not have a sharpener. By the time the protagonists have reached and decided to descend an accessible route down the cliff the second pencil is also blunt. The third pencil fails him as the two people light a fire and throw stones into the darkening sea. By the time his fourth pencil is finished his characters are looking up to the top of the cliff where they see two people who, from this distance, look exactly like them - clothes, relative height, hair - perfect doppelgängers. Seabirds wheel and squawk as the air grows colder, etc etc. At this point he becomes aware that five pencils will not be enough to complete his story. He makes a snap decision: in future he will only write stories that can be finished within the lifespan of one sharpening of a single pencil. He takes out the fifth pencil and begins to write the story of a man who, having forgotten to bring out his pen, buys a packet of five pencils and goes into a café to write a story about two people