“HEY, Mr Hare. Why are you haring around?”

It was a line from an old 1980s TV ad for Cadbury’s Caramel, spoken by a sexy cartoon rabbit, and I often bring it to mind, along with her advice for the hare, which was to “take everything really easy, just like old Tortoise.”

Just to emphasize the point, the sexy rabbit had a homely West Country accent, Cadbury’s obviously realising that, down in this part of the world, the pace of life is (or at least used to be) slower and more sensible.

Unfortunately, since those days, the world has somehow become much busier and ever more frantic, so we find ourselves haring around more than ever before.

If you are also an older person, so that your time goes faster than it does for younger folk, then the whole world seems to have gone into overdrive.

Bizarrely, the thing that made me think about all this was Alfie, our cat.

One evening last week we were trying to watch something on telly. It was The Durrells, the gentlest and most inoffensive of programmes, which you can spend an hour winding down with.

No sooner had we settled down to watch it than we heard the cat flap in the kitchen fly open, and half a second later Alfie came flying round the corner, did a lap of the coffee table and disappeared again, back through the cat flap from whence he came, which was still swinging.

We just looked at each other, while Poppy, our other cat, who is a little bit older and has the air of a cat who has seen everything and is therefore rather superior to silly young cats, just looked up, gave a look of contempt and went back to sleep.

Most people seem more like Alfie than Poppy, rushing around for no apparent reason, desperate for the light not to turn red before they get there, and sometimes willing to risk terrible consequences if it does.

I have come to the conclusion that the human race has become more race than human, and this is never more evident than on the roads, which have been bringing out the worst of many people’s character for some years now.

A couple of years ago I decided to be what some people think is really boring and observe all speed limits, and now we have a car with cruise control, I can even get it to control the speed for me.

It’s amazing how de-stressing it can be to get in a car and drive sensibly.

The only drawback is it infuriates drivers who get stuck behind me, many of whom have the bizarre notion that driving about six feet from my bumper will somehow persuade me to break the law and speed up, rather than what it actually does, which is to make me slow down.

I can’t say I practise what I preach when I am on my bike, however.

I have been cycling a lot in the last few weeks, which has made me much fitter, and therefore able to go much faster.

So I do.

It would be far better to sometimes sit back and enjoy the moment, because that is ultimately what happiness is.

At least being on a bike does give you the time to philosophise about such things, and by the time I got back from my latest ride, I had decided my forthcoming holiday would be a good place to start taking my time and thinking about what I can do to get more out of life by slowing it down.

It’s time for all of us to unleash our inner tortoise.