Travels with my Donkey

and shoved and bellowed, but the considerable pride he had invested in this show of resistance proved greater than my diminished physical reserves. With the still unseen motorist almost upon us I turned uphill, preparing to halt him with a frail and desperate Railway Children entreaty; as I did so, a hefty brown hand appeared on my shoulder.
    'Tranquilo, tranquilo,' breathed its large, vested owner,- I surrendered, silently anticipating a demonstration of donk-lore distilled through many rural generations, and being therefore rather taken aback when my Samaritan snatched up the rope in both hands and yanked with such explosive, roaring gusto that I cringed my eyes shut, expecting when I opened them again to see Shinto's tattily severed head flying over the tree-tops, trailing its rope like a field event at the Mafia Olympics. Instead, just as the car shot past in a cloud of horn noise, I beheld those huge yellow eyes, suddenly limpid and conciliatory, looking back at me across the tarmac.
    The outskirt villas of Triacastela were now watching us through the hefty oaks, but it was clear that we'd not be going much further that day. I could usually depend on a road gang for some spirited taunting, but when the four blokes peering out of a pathside trench took in Shinto's laboured stumbling they issued only a muted round of sombre applause, as if watching the last finisher in a marathon stagger drunkenly up to the line. A concentration of sun-hatted loungers by a whitewashed building in a field up ahead alerted me to the refugio 's proximity, and we were perhaps 15 yards from the indicated turnoff when the camino was traversed by a grate-covered drain. I planted a foot on it and Shinto froze at my side, like a cartoon pointer dog. Only once, on the first day, had he expressed serious concern at such an entity; and this, with a span of perhaps 6 inches, was handsomely the poxiest non-obstacle he had yet refused.
    After all the day's travails we'd both had enough of physical force. I sat down against a dusty, lizarded wall on the other side of the grate, pulled my hat down over my face, and waited. And ate, and waited, and slept.
    'Perhaps it looks like a cattle-grid to him,' said the voice that roused me. I jerked my head straight, stoutly smiting the wall behind, and found myself blearily contemplating the Englishwoman, heading a small crowd that had apparently wandered up from the refugio and now formed a semicircle around Shinto. Heavy lids, lowered head — he seemed to have downshifted into stand-by mode, like an unattended laptop. Arching my back and smothering an epic yawn, I critically surveyed those modest galvanised louvres at his feet. 'Perhaps,' I conceded at length, 'but what we've got here is more of a gerbil-grid.'
    I creaked upright and took stock of what, before a North European audience, had just become a rather diminished pool of options. The Lilja Method was by far the most humane, but when my proffered handful of wild barley earned only blank rejection and the bursting snort of poorly stifled sniggers, I strode purposefully through the pilgrims — largely French, as that sibilant muttering made plain — and bid them stand aside. Once Shinto's stolid hindquarters lay at the end of a cleared corridor I inhaled prodigiously, and before I could change my mind charged through the sunburn and sandals, shrieking and clapping like an ergot-addled peasant. The corridor widened dramatically, a flock of birds took panicked flight, and, waiting until I was almost upon him, Shinto took the solitary lethargic step that was all I required.
    'Blimey,' breathed the Englishwoman as I picked up the rope and prepared to lead Shinto away with what little dignity could be rationally justified.
    'Mais... ça va pas!' came a shriller voice, a voice which swiftly rose in timbre and volume to a piping blast of accusatory outrage. Affreux... anglais... agressif: I didn't catch much, but what I did was more than enough. The phrase 'living-room tou-tou' marched impressively into my hot head, and I swiftly formulated a furious bilingual riposte about this theme with which to wheel round and counter-attack my accuser. I never did, though. Partly because nobody would have understood, not even me, and partly because I had suddenly and alarmingly pictured Shinto as my child, and considered in this light what I had just done represented an act of cruel and certainly unusual punishment. That was rubbish too, of course — what was I