I saw an advert this morning for a speed reading course - the world keeps on getting faster every time I raise my head. I wonder if you were to learn to speed read, could you ever go back to reading like a normal person or would it be that every time you pick up a novel, you find yourself haring through it In less time than it takes the rest of us to decide where to sit?

Is there any joy in speed reading? I can see how it might be beneficial if you're a spy or need to learn how you land an aircraft in less than two minutes, but that's all I got. Come to think about it, I can only come up with a few instances In which doing anything incredibly fast is useful:

1. Some kind of Olympic competitive event in which you will be hung, drawn and quartered if you return home without a medal

2. Robbing a bank. We go in. We get what we want. We come out.
(© Tarantino/Avary: Killing Zoe)

3. Shopping with your mother or kids... or even worse, both

And now I'm out of examples. What's the obsession with hammering your way through life at a million miles an hour? That 'live fast, die young' thing is a bullshit myth - always was and always will be because I guarantee you this, nobody who ever lived fast and bit the bullet ever left a good looking corpse behind. Fact. That's not to say I'm not a big fan of death... I'm very much a fan, but in its own sweet time thanks. In the big scheme of things, we're all here for nothing but a fraction of a heartbeat anyway - what's the rush?

On which note, I'm about to engineer a lazy Sunday with a pen but if you feel the need to move particularly fast today, do it to this:

(It's always good to start the rest of your life to a tune that has lyrics worth listening to.)