Listen, listen

The brain, they're trying to convince me, is like a big old rolltop desk.

There. Now you're as puzzled as I was, my dear unseen friend.

Nooks and crannies and the smell of mothballs, eh? Pencil parings in the drawers. A little bottle of ink, eager to be spilled. A forgotten glacier mint in an envelope otherwise full of stamps.

A sorting office, then. They wheeled this fresh metaphor into the room and turned it around for my inspection. Lots of niches in which to store things while you sort them out.

Store what things?

Well, said the nurse, removing a bit of fluff from a lense of her goggles. That depends on whether we're talking about your brain or the rolltop desk. Envelopes. Thoughts. Envelopes with thoughts inside them.

I don't need a desk, I said. Take it away.

This got a laugh. But it didn't stop them continuing to "explain" the problems with my head in terms of post office sorting offices, urban traffic systems and a jar of boiled sweets. There's been a series of mis-filings in the first, a rag and bone man's cart has shed its load in the second, and the third are all stuck together.

I would have asked them to explain further, but considered that enough damage had already been done.

I asked the nurse again for a flare pistol. She seemed to find this very amusing.

Verey amusing! Eh? Eh?

The tea lady didn't get it either.