Roy Palfrey isn't what you might call dynamic. "I'm not slow, I'm methodical," he tells his frustrated wife Shelley when she asks why he thinks his colleagues bought him a tortoise and left it on his office chair with a pair of specs on.

But when the tortoise, Merlin, wakes up prematurely from its winter hibernation and refuses to eat, Roy begins to wake up too. Long-dormant emotions are unexpectedly revived as he fights to save his fellow-creature from a certain death.

DRAMA & COMEDY

Broadcast on Radio4 in December 2007