Every thought I thought was like a little paper plane wafting merrily away from me across the room carrying away a little bit of my good sense with it as it went. They came and went so effortlessly these thoughts. They came and went so easily that I hardly noticed them going. If you had asked me I would probably have replied that of course I noticed them come and go but I didn’t really. I thought that I did but I didn’t – I was somewhere else. I was in fairy-land. I was playing noughts and crosses in my imagination and losing. I was being led down the garden path. I was building castles in the clouds…

So there I was, sitting in my armchair, firing off one paper plane after another and being so hypnotized by the whole business of it that after a while I didn’t even know that I was doing it. I didn’t at all know that I was doing it. And every little dart that flew across the room was carrying a little bit of my good sense with it, as is always the way with thoughts. Waving goodbye to my sense, waving goodbye to my sense, waving goodbye to my sense…

Only I wasn’t because I didn’t have the sense to know that I was waving goodbye to my sense. I didn’t have the sense to know anything. Isn’t that always the way? Do the senseless ever object to losing yet more of the pitifully meagre store of the good sense that they still have left to them? There’s no accounting for the senseless, is there? There’s no accounting for what they may or may not do. It’s all too easy to lose sense in this world of ours I fear. Nothing could be easier. No one seems to want to hang on to their good sense. No one wants to hang on to their wits. Why not give in and become witless?

There’s a hypnotic quality to this whole business of becoming senseless, isn’t there? Once you get in the swing of it you find that you just can’t stop. You don’t have the option. That’s the hypnotic quality you see – once you start doing it then the next thing is that you can’t stop and the next thing after that is that it’s doing you. The foot is on the other boot. Only you don’t really find this out because you’ve lost the run of yourself at this stage. You haven’t a clue. You’ve lost the plot…

So there I was, sitting in my armchair bemusedly thinking thoughts one after another as if there was no tomorrow. One thought followed another and there seemed to be no end to them. Each thought just as dumb as the one that came before it. I’m the thinker of thoughts, I told myself, that’s what defines me, that’s what distinguishes me from the lower animals. That’s what distinguishes me from the fishes roosting in the trees and the birds flocking in the sea, I said to myself. The power of thought.

I thought about getting up and making myself another cup of tea but on reflection the effort seemed too great and I gave up on it. It occurred to me that I might be getting weak and feeble as a result of thinking too much but the thought, like all the others, quickly passed and I forgot all about it. Outside the front door of my house and all the way down the street hundreds and hundreds of thoughts were queuing up to take their turn at thinking me. A huge motley crowd of miscellaneous thoughts, all waiting patiently in line right the way down the street….