Let’s look at the opera-novel first. It’s called "Dr. Ox’s Experiment" and it is set in an imaginary town called Quiquendone. Until the doctor’s experiment, everything there happens in slow motion. Normal walking speed is one foot per second; a song normally lasting 5 minutes takes an hour to sing; catching a fish requires all day (some might doubt whether this was actually slow motion, but never mind); lovers are engaged for 30 years …. And then Dr. Ox decides it is time for a change. He injects a gas into the town’s electric lighting system, and hey presto everything speeds up. The town hall rushes through decrees so fast nobody can keep up; theatre lovers find a complete play takes only 10 minutes; engagements last half an hour, and then collapse; peaceful relations break down and the citizens’ army assembles to fight a battle in 5 minutes, and so on. And then …. there is a great explosion.

Our contemporary Western world seems like the aftermath of Dr. Ox’s tinkering. There is so much going on, and so fast, that most of us are stressed out of our minds. Our world, for centuries so tortoise-like, has leapt on the moving pavement with a vengeance. Though much progress is praiseworthy, we watch our supermarkets become ever more heaving malls of materialism and our car queues grow daily, and wonder: where will it all end? When – and how – will the explosion come? Meanwhile the churches have joined in, and many display a semi-hysterical mania for rushing on ever faster with project after project, wearing their members out.