The Tortoise and the Hare
It was an overcast Autumn afternoon and the average speed of the M3 (southbound) was a steady 74 mph. Not that Tortoise seemed to have noticed; to him it was a steady 55 mph all the way. For him everyone else was welcome to the middle and third lanes, but he was kind of the inside lane, and that was the way he liked it.
That was, of course, before Hare came along, just before junction 3. She bounded up to him in the middle lane before poking him in the shell. Strangely enough Tortoise didn’t feel this, and with some sort of Radio 4 discussion show playing inside his shell, hadn’t heard Hare approach. Eventually Hare realised it would be a much smarter idea to poke Tortoise in the tail to get some attention, and with a swift jab in that direction, the radio volume dimmed and Tortoise looked around.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Hare” said Hare, as if this should have been perhaps a fair bit more obvious than it seemed to have been. “Where are you off to?”
Not being an animal of swift mental agility, Tortoise took a moment or two to ponder upon this. “South” he said in the end, as at least if he didn’t know exactly where he was going, he knew the direction he was going in. “Why?”
“Because I’m racing you there” said Hare, and then she bounced off in front.
Damn, thought Tortoise, that’s all I need, some sort of race. But then again, what the hell. And with that, he sped up to a positively speedy 60 mph, which I’m reliably told by Braniac is the speed of time itself. One day that show might actually include both science and the truth, though many would say those two rarely go together.
Anyway, back to the point. Hare was winning, quite easily. So easily that she thought she would have a break, and so she stopped at Fleet services. And whilst she was waiting the extremely long time it takes anyone to make a coffee (with perhaps the exception of the Costa in Poole) Tortoise actually overtook her. Half an hour later, knowing she had some catching up to do, she sped off.
Luckily, Tortoise had found some road works (completion Spring 2009, apologise for the delays which we will be causing for AN ENTIRE YEAR! MWHAHAHA!) As the queue of traffic slowly filtered past the invisible workmen, the statue workmen, and those workmen struggling to open their umbrellas because it was a windy day, Tortoise looked back to see Hare only four places behind him.
Hare was more distracted by the specially trained highway maintenance guinea pig which had been trained to eat only tarmac and was slowly tearing up the road with a subtle ‘Om Nom Nom Nom’ now and again. Transfixed by this beast of a small mammal, Hare failed to realise the traffic speed up again. Only when the sports hedgehog behind her let his feelings on the matter show did she notice the huge gap in front of her, and speed off again.
Five minutes later, Hare had overtaken Tortoise.
Forty minutes after that Hare reached the finish line, which someone had conveniently put up at the end of the M3. Pleased with herself, she looked back to see how close the race was. Tortoise was nowhere to be seen. So she waited half an hour, still no sign. Tortoise, downhearted that he had been overtaken and with the knowledge that Hare wasn’t stupid enough to stop again, had slowed down to a meandering pace which forced local snails into the middle lane in order to overtake. Hare felt a little guilty when someone told her what Tortoise was up to, so in an attempt to encourage him a bit more she took the shiny finishing line poles which someone had thoughtfully provided, and dragged them back up the road to Winchester, hoping Tortoise was close, so he could still get a respectable time. He wasn’t.
Perhaps, thought Hare, some competition would spur him on. Quickly onto Facebook, Hare got about 20 people to start from Fleet to race the Tortoise to Winchester (15 might attend, 3 were missing out and 1245631 didn’t reply in time). And so the Tortoise was overtaken by another Hare, three field mice and a badger. And a platypus. And a small donkey. And some firemen but I’m not really sure they were part of the race, or if they were just going to put out a fire. In the end it was a photo finish between Tortoise and a sloth, who just nicked it with a gangster lean which might have just been falling over.
“What happened?” asked Hare when Tortoise sidled over to him after the race. “Why’d you give up?”
“Don’t know really” replied Tortoise, “I’m meant to win, that’s how the story goes, but it didn’t work”
“Story smory, what race in the history of everything was won by deliberately going slower than everyone else. Going fastest, sort of part of the definition of a race wouldn’t you say?”
“Meh” said Tortoise, giving up again and trundling off, knowing that he should really race against equally slow tortoises next time.
Add comment March 18th, 2008