As I write this now from the sofa, I’m looking down at a pile of magazines lying next to my feet. These are copies of Auto Express, which are kindly dropped through the letterbox by a man on our road every couple of weeks or so. Evidently he knows that I’m a petrolhead, and the fact that he thinks of passing the magazines on to me after he’s finished with them is very gratefully acknowledged. Whenever I see a new one in the house I am intrigued, as I always am when I read or watch something car-related, or see it up close. There’s just a small problem – namely that regardless of how interested I am in the car magazines, I regrettably never seem to get around to finishing all of them.

I cannot stress enough how much this annoys me, because I really do want to read of all of them as fully as possible, but it would seem that my own laziness is stopping me from engaging even with something I’m enthusiastic about. I devour countless articles and TV programmes on the subject of the car, and it should therefore be very easy for me to read every issue of Auto Express just as swiftly as I get through every issue of F1 Racing, to which I have had a subscription since 2010. For some reason, however, it never quite happens as planned, even when a copy of the magazine is very close to hand. Auto Express can be found on the kitchen table, in the living room and in my bedroom, and yet perhaps it can be said that in the heat of the moment, when I’m busy surfing the web on my Kindle, it’s easier (thanks to my laziness) to stick with that than to extend an arm and pick up the reading material. That’s a shame, wouldn’t you say? It is something that I had noticed long ago, and I’ve spent some time trying to figure out exactly what has been causing such neglect when there’s no reason for it to happen.

But it’s just down to me, and therefore I need to make sure I cast aside the laziness by reminding myself that I’ll be reading about something I enjoy and that I should put the Kindle down for an hour or so. Doing that will benefit both me and my Mum and Dad, because they won’t get the wrong end of the stick. If they’re reading this, I’d like to reassure them that I really do enjoy Auto Express – it’s just that, as with many things, it takes a while to muster the strength before I can read it. Mark my words, though; that won’t be the case from here on in!

Mason