It gets cold at night here. Have you ever tried being a snail when it’s cold? For the most part, it sucks. We freeze easily. We get stuck to things. Our touchscreens stop working properly. No one sells scarves for snails.

On the bright side, most of the birds are on holiday. Across the Mediterranean, or somewhere. And the ones that have hung around, they wear mittens on their claws, making it much harder for them to grip us. And eat us. So we can go out without fear. We let little blades of slime freeze beneath us, just enough to form a skate. And then we shuffle onto the hardened lake, and we dance the Bolero.