A common or garden, ground coloured snail made its home on my gleaming white bathroom tiles. It parked in the neighbourhood of the shower head, three rows down from the window ledge, leaving a purposeful but jagged trail down the patterned pane which showed up in the steam from my bath. That tile was the snail’s destination. With forefinger and thumb I took hold of the snail’s shell and cast it, treading on air, out of the window. Later, when I left the house and passed the bathroom on the outside, I saw the snail with its shell like a ship in sail on the dirt sea, heading for that tile again.
