Travels with my Donkey

sympathiser.
    In the act of unpacking, a ziplock bag of almonds appeared, donated by that American art historian on the first evening ('Bought more than 5 pounds,' he'd said, awed by his own folly). I was eating them by a trellis of wet socks in the little garden when a gaunt and lightly bearded German walked briskly up. I'd seen him many times with his wife.
    'Your monkey is maybe a little curious,' he beamed mysteriously.
    'Oh, yes?' I replied. The only suitable place I'd been able to park Shinto was by a tree at the edge of the grass outside that first refugio. Perhaps he had eaten a Dutch teenager's shoe.
    'Oh, yes. I should say that.' He fingered the bottom half of his face sagely. 'Yes. But perhaps too curious?'
    I sat forward in my plastic chair. Perhaps he had eaten a Dutch teenager. 'I don't understand.'
    'Soon your monkey is finding his own pilgrimage.' Another Confucian smile. You don't find many lapels to grab en route to Santiago, so instead I stood up and addressed him with a crispness that bordered on the forthright.
    'What are you saying? Has the monk— the donkey done something?'
    He closed his eyes and nodded, opening them along with his mouth perhaps two seconds before the time came to have almonds crammed up his nose. 'He is not attached to the tree. I am Tum-Tum the Daddy Groon.'
    Actually he might not have said that last bit, because with the word 'tree' still hanging in the tepid, socky air I flew out of my chair and charged through the albergue and up the empty alley like Ewan McGregor at the start of Trainspotting, only with sandals on.
    It took me less than a minute to get to the church, but that was easily long enough to imagine Shinto legs up in a river, legs off on a hard shoulder, legs akimbo under a lust-blinded stallion. Long enough to imagine walking alone in a donkless world.
    A nicotine-tached Frenchman had Shinto by the ring on his head collar, leading him confidently back towards the tree watched by a happy semicircle of Holland's youth. I placed both my hands on Shinto's dusted withers. 'Thank you,' I gasped, surprisingly close to tears. 'Um... merci beaucoup.' Squinting through his cig smoke, he said it was nothing, then, in tones of light admonishment, explained that the knot had been inadequate. As he stooped to demonstrate a more secure alternative, the young pilgrims encroached, exchanging muttered gutturalisms. I told you: the donkey man knows nothing. Can't even tie a knot. The sandaled oaf.
    Half an hour later I was outside a bar in Belorado's Plaza Mayor, a big mixed salad and a jug of rosé on the table before me and beyond it another tantalising glimpse, a tapas-sized appetiser, of the small-town good times that got into gear as we tossed about in our snore-torn bunk-house. It was well past any infant bedtime that I was familiar with, yet children as young as three or four were careering about on their big brothers' bikes, or punting footballs against the brutally coppiced plane trees. Half a dozen more were up on the central bandstand energetically trading Pokémon cards, and on the benches around young couples gazed moonily at each other's tilted faces. A well-kempt wino loped irregularly by, and I thought how much better off he was here than in whatever the British equivalent of Belorado might be — a town with 2,000 souls in the impoverished middle of rural nowhere. Buenos días, I had of late realised, meant not good day but good days, plural.
    The sun eased down behind the arcade of shops opposite — half nine and you could still buy yourself a pair of wedge espadrilles — and as a bull died on the screen behind her the teenage waitress brought over my steak and chips. I hoisted a glass at a distant table of familiar faces, then sat back to enumerate my successes and failures as tourist, drover and pilgrim.
    Well — we were both still alive, I hadn't seen a cockroach or had a single stone in my boot, and in ten days I'd spent less than 70 quid. In the square here at Belorado there was even a price war: €6.60 for three courses on that side of the plaza; €6.00 for two courses with wine on this. More pertinently, I was becoming a very slightly nicer person. I'd started leaving tips that staff didn't interpret as a calculated insult, at least not always, and had made an effort to stop describing fellow pilgrims as 'that ugly Austrian', 'the pointless gnome' or 'those pudding-bowled lesbos'.
    But then I had also beaten a donkey with a bunch of flowers, still