Do not do this in the rush hour, because while you might safely take off from West Park, I cannot guarantee exactly where you will land in Brum, and it could very well be in the middle of Queensway, or crashing through the roof and into the well-worn bed of Maisie Thompson, 29 Borogrove Gardens, Erdington, B24 8AN.

Hang on a minute, there's somebody at the door.

Right. Einstein was once sitting on the train from London, bound for Oxford.

The train had not yet left the station, and Einstein, deep in thought, suddenly asked the stranger sitting opposite him a question which seemed quite logical to Einstein but led the stranger to believe he was sharing the compartment with a madman.

"Excuse me,'' said Einstein, "but could you tell me what time Oxford arrives at this train?''

Theoretically, if we could stand still about three inches off the ground, we could simply wait and allow the spinning globe to take us on a free world tour at 1,000 miles an hour, at no cost whatever. It would be the ultimate free ride.

Unfortunately, there is that nasty little force called gravity to contend with. We all know what it does, but nobody knows precisely what it is. It's a bit like Jimmy Savile, in that respect.

Some people best disregarded maintain that gravity is God's way of stopping us getting a free ride in life, but I reckon it's just a way of keeping soil in the garden.

Otherwise, the stuff would be up in the sky, it would be dark all day, and weeding would be an even bigger chore, not to mention mowing the lawn, so we won't.

If this sounds a bit zany, that is only because reality is zany.

If this planet stopped travelling at 1,000 miles an hour, everything on it that wasn't screwed to the ground would take off. We would fly off the planet and into space at an alarming rate - 1,000 miles an hour, to be exact.

So you see the problem we face. We can either stay put and let the Earth travel at 1,000mph, or stop the world and get off at 1,000mph, with no brakes. Even Ladas would be travelling at 1,000mph. That's how crazy the whole business is.

However, all this may well be so, but what I want to know - and what I shall ask the first don I can collar, the moment Oxford arrives at my front door - is the 64,000-yen question: "When we eventually develop a car that can travel at 1,000mph, what is going to happen to the driver and car when it reaches that speed, travelling in the opposite direction to that in which the planet is rotating?

Will it suddenly stop and hover, as the rest of us go hurtling by? In other words, will it become invisible? And then will it slowly take shape again, like a phantom, as it decelerates?

It would have to, wouldn't it? In which case, existence, as we perceive it, would not depend upon matter, but upon speed.

If speed can bring about these disturbing events, just think what Ecstasy, crack and Newcastle Brown Ale can do.

That's why I stopped going to ballroom dancing. I know the frenzy that you can get into when the Brylcreem melts and the mesmeric pounding of Mares Eat Oats And Does Eat Oats And Little Lambs Eat Ivy stirs what butchers call "the loins''.

We wrinklies learned our lesson the hard way, but you try telling that to today's kids. They won't listen to aword you say.

No wonder they're in the state they are in,raving the nights away to carnal music, strobe lighting and the noisy swallowing and sniffing of noxious substances.

And what happens when you try to talk to them about their lifestyle? All you can get out of them are gruntings about the behaviour of sub-atomic particles, diatribes on quantum physics, or the application of Wittgenstein's linguistic concept of reality to the elements.

Yow cor tell them anythin'.

They wo' lissen.