Would it be hard to reorder the content (right) column and menu (left) column in the HTML source of the site?
e.g. by inserting a blank cell first, like this:
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD rowspan=2](content)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD](menu)[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Recently a storm brought my landline network down, so I had to use GPRS to access the net. Slow and paid per byte. So I see the byte counter going up, and painstakingly slowly, link after link, image after image in the left column being loaded - and only after the last one loaded, the content appeared. I can press ESC any moment and abort loading of the remainder of the page, but it only makes sense after the body of a message is loaded. Until then I wait... and wait... and watch the money counter go up...