National Escargot Day

In ten days time Cafe Rouge will be serving them up for less than £5 a portion. They'll be 34,000 of them. In Norwich one restaurant is planning a snail hunt to celebrate National Escargot Day. People can hunt for 20 huge cut-out snails around the city with the chance of winning Eurostar tickets to Paris. Heston Blumenthal, the owner of the best restaurant in the world, makes porridge with them. Thankfully vegetarianism creeped up on me ten years ago and the delights of sautéed snails on Parma ham porridge have eluded my taste buds. Instead I have spent the last two weeks rummaging through my flowerbed like a crazed horticulturist lobbing the slimy creatures into the park. I'm hoping it will take them a good few weeks to regain consciousness (having been thrown through the air with vengeance) and even longer for them to crawl back onto my garden. Unfortunately some snails live for up to 15 years. Perhaps I should collect them and sell them on for profit? There are hundreds of forums telling you how to keep pet snails. One such site informs you that snails do react to stimuli and can get bored. It's therefore 'imperative' to keep your snails in a fairly interesting home, with nooks and crannies to hide and compost or peat for them to burrow in. Can you imagine getting up in the morning and stepping over Marjorie the snail on the way to the bathroom after she's left a trail of slime in her wake? The same site also tells prospective snail owners that snails respond well to being handled, and though primarily nocturnal can be encouraged to emerge at other times of the day very easily. Oh great. So they come crawling out of the nooks and crannies in your house and do what exactly? Suddenly having them in the flowerbed seems to be the lesser of two evils.