Fiasco

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The old boy was standing in front of the filing cabinet. He was thinking. It was midmorning. (Relatively — getting on for ten). Around this time the old boy was always in the habit of having a think.

He had plenty of troubles and woes, so there were things to think about.

But the old boy was not thinking about what he ought to have been thinking about.

We cannot know precisely what he was thinking about: all one could see was that he was thinking, not what he was thinking. It could be that he was not thinking at all. But then it was midmorning (relatively — getting on for ten), and he had got used to being in the habit of having a think around this time. By now the old boy had acquired such a routine of having a think that at these times he was capable of giving the impression of having a think even when he was not thinking, and perhaps even when he imagined he was thinking. That’s the honest truth, not to put too fine a point on it.

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