A snail's journey: A tragic story of insomnia

It was about 12:45 in the morning and I woke up -just like that, no apparent reason.

I must of lain awake for what seemed like an eternity, willing myself to go back to sleep, because let's face it, sleep is precious when you have to wake up at 6 and get up to make school lunches, wake up grumpy kids, plod around in the dark grumphing and grumbling and feeling anything other than human, before that first cup of coffee.

So I lay there, trying to think of really boring things. Boring things that would send anyone to sleep. I tried to imagine someone telling me how a computer works or what exactly an alternator is...I even tried to lull myself to sleep by the sound of my husband's snoring...nothing was working.

Then as I was staring blankly at my curtain, I saw the silhouette of a snail on my window. I watched as the snail (whom we shall call Fred for this story) slowly, slimily, oozed his way on the glass pane. The curtain had folds in it and so at the start of the first fold I started to time Fred until he got past the second fold (yes, I was in the depths of deep desperation! Such is what sleep deprivation does to one!).
On your marks...get set....Go.... I began to count...I must of nodded off for a few brilliant seconds but when I opened my eyes again, Fred was still plodding on... I had counted 90 seconds (give a take the few I fell asleep in). It had taken Fred a full 90 seconds to cross a 5cm distance!

As if this wasn't boring enough, I began (quite unintentionally) to think that this would make a rather cool maths question for my daughter to solve: If Fred covers a distance of 5cm in 90 seconds, How many seconds does it take Fred to cover a distance of 30cm?

And with that, I must of gone off to sleep, as the last thing I saw was Fred sliding along, at break-neck speed across my window and I woke up at 6, in the dark, grumpy and in need of coffee.

PS By now Fred must of least covered half a meter!