Every now and then I wander into a bookshop and get annoyed by the books they put on the big table at the front. Most of them are normally about how we're living in an accelerated world and everything's speeding up and ohmygodhowcanwecope weneedtodisconnect.
And I always think well yeah, but walking a mile, or three miles or a hundred yards takes about as long as it always has. An hour is still sixty minutes. Pregnancy, no quicker. Getting furniture from a shop still takes ages, especially in the UK. Getting your horse shod - I bet that takes a lot longer these days. Getting planning permission? Has that sped up? I bet it hasn't. Getting to Grade 8 on the bassoon - no quicker these days. It takes longer to die nowadays. It takes longer to get through school. Sand trickles through a narrow gap no quicker. Beethoven symphonies are performed much slower than he wrote them. Watching a film takes longer. Reading Catch-22, still takes longer than you'd like. In fact, all books are too long. Getting to Cornwall still takes forever. And it takes me exactly the same amount of time to walk to the chip shop as it always has and the chips are never on.