India Rubber Man

Today at the library I ended up sharing a table with someone whom I soon nicknamed the India rubber man, not because he displayed an extreme flexibility of limb but as he spent most of his time vigorously rubbing out his pencilled attempts at a newspaper puzzle (possibly a Sudoku – though difficult to tell under the growing mound of debris so produced), and with his efforts constantly shaking the table my own writing soon developed a pattern of (normal) scrawl punctuated by illegibility.