You are all very fast nowadays. Nearly all of you, anyway (I strive to steer away from generalisation). I wonder where you believe you are going with it. It’s an illusion, of course, most of the time: speed, and the efficiency and ease it promises. A new superfast train corridor smashes through ancient woodland, fucks over a couple of Elizabethan farmhouses, rapes and pillages the homesteads of hares, otters, stoats and badgers, but it’s OK because Stewart will be home from the office a whole half an hour sooner, and be able to use the time to play computer games in his living room, rather than on the go. Your connections and your engines get slicker yet you feel more rushed, more pushed, and the days evaporate like never before. You fly at warp speed towards your destination, thirsty for it, never stopping to consider that destination is another word for death. You do not factor in what is missed until it is too late. The default position is that progress is pace. But when will this state of nirvana that it’s all leading to occur, where each person will operate at peak speed and be perfectly happy and undelayed and no longer have to walk or use their mind? And will it all be worth it? Away from technology’s grand illusion, everything moves at the same speed as ever. A grand old beech, poorly for some time, was felled on my shin yesterday. The 211 rings on its trunk tell the truth. Run your finger along them. They’re smooth, consistent, redoubtable. The space between them didn’t change just because somebody invented the microchip or the fax or the microwave oven.