Once upon a time, there were some snails. From Failand they hailed. One day they qualied, railed, wailed, flailed, and, due to an excess of ale, ailed, went pale, frail, and – finally – failed to prevail.

One was devoured by a nightingale; one was jailed, then bailed, then inter-railed and derailed; two were trampled underfoot at a clearance sale; one got fired by e-mail; another got knifed in Perivale; three went stale; one went beyond the veil; two more got lost on a false trail for the Holy Grail; one went blind and couldn’t get its head round Braille; one got bogged down in too much extraneous detail; one got blown up by a suicide bomber in Israel; one suffered a calamitous betrayal; another embarked on a disastrous career in retail; one couldn’t decide if it was male or female; one expired because it could neither inhale or exhale; one succumbed to limescale; one fell in love and was cruelly rejected and then committed suicide in Marseilles; one was lynched by incensed anti-gastropod readers of the Daily Mail; two sailed to Shale in a pail and got caught in a gale of hail and then got swallowed by a whale; and the last got impaled on a rusty nail.

What a sorry tale. The snails could have prevailed, but, instead – unfortunately – they failed.