In the High and Far-Off Times, O Best Beloved, before GCSE, frogs did not spend their days in queue-jumping investigations. Each frog sat on a lily-pad in the middle of his very own pond, wondering how to get to the edge.

Now these frogs were Progressive Frogs—more than that, O Best Beloved, they were Geometrically Progressive Frogs, and each time they jumped, they could only manage to jump half the distance of their last jump.