us down. So badly that by the time St Jean's stout city walls rose up before us, we'd already contravened EU regulations on the movement of animals. Six hours Shinto had been in the back, seven by the time we'd eaten a very late lunch. Eight when we'd stocked up at a hypermarket with coat brushes, donkey salt and a washing-up-cum-drinking bowl, and a round ten when, having failed to find field or stabling in St Jean, we finally unloaded our — my — blinking, sweaty donkey outside a hillside guesthouse in Valcarlos, 10 kilometres up the road on the Spanish side of the border.
Not starting in France comprised a reasonably profound fuck-up, but even as I dusted myself down on the wrong side of this metaphorical first fence I found I didn't care. Yes, yes, so I wouldn't quite be doing the full 774 kilometres. And yes, unless I got really badly lost I'd never now experience the rare thrill of walking a donkey across an international frontier. But these were of little import beside the imminent apocalyptic awfulness.
'So,' said Hanno, tying Shinto's 12-foot 'night rope' to a tree in the corner of the guest house's front garden, a steeply pitched realm rich in mint and thistles and soilable playground equipment. We'd run through all we could think of. Which saddle straps to adjust and attach, and which to leave well alone. A trial run with the packing procedure, looping and lashing panniers and waterproof bags through brass rings and round plastic saddle horns until the two sides hung in balanced harmony. Last-minute supply essentials: a tube of stinking multi-purpose donk-ointment, a kind of stout screwdriver for scraping out Shinto's feet, and Hanno's own chunkily ethnic pullover for conditions I'd forgotten to prepare for. I'd had him do his 'Eeeuuuwwww' into the Dictaphone so I could practise at nights — one way of emptying the bunk above, if nothing else. And again and again and again that sodding knot. He eventually distilled those whorls and twists into terms a drugged Cub Scout could have grasped: the snake comes up through the well, round the tree, and back down the well.
'So,' he repeated. This was it: the hot, hard slap to the face that said I was about to be left alone, in sole charge of a sizeable farmyard being, with a trans-Iberian journey of nearly 500 miles — a journey indeed of biblical proportions — ahead of me.
'Just a minute,' I blurted, stalling desperately. 'We haven't talked about the punishment beatings.'
'Beatings?'
'Yes — I mean I'm not going to hit him, but how hard should I if I was going to?'
'No,' said Hanno, with a look bravely purged of despair. 'Not to punish. Just to make some autorité. And not in fact hitting.'
He opened the Landcruiser's heavy, battered driver's door and planted a filthy boot on the sill. 'No!' I squeaked. Then, in a slightly better voice: 'The crap. Do I have to pick up his crap? I really don't want to.'
Hanno nodded as kindly as he felt able to. 'By the finish you won't care to hold donkay shit in your fingers. By the finish you will be eating together from this.' He rapped a large knuckle against the washing-up bowl in my hands and jumped into the cab.
'By the finish?' I quavered, my pale face angled up at him.
'You will arrive in Santiago,' he said, but the pause before he said it was rather longer than I'd have preferred. And with that, and a many-pointed U-turn, this lovely big man was gone from my life.
It was all so desperate that I hardly even noticed that the room was 50 euros, a sum that I'd been told would keep a Confraternity hard-noser fed and bedded for a week. And that didn't even bag me a telly, obliging me to make my own fun by impregnating the room with the stench of sweat and crap, a stench supplied for the moment by Shinto's saddle and the thick blanket that protected him from its more chafesome straps.
I bundled both into a wardrobe, then laid all the maps and guidebooks out on the bed. Tomorrow — wince, swallow — was a
Not starting in France comprised a reasonably profound fuck-up, but even as I dusted myself down on the wrong side of this metaphorical first fence I found I didn't care. Yes, yes, so I wouldn't quite be doing the full 774 kilometres. And yes, unless I got really badly lost I'd never now experience the rare thrill of walking a donkey across an international frontier. But these were of little import beside the imminent apocalyptic awfulness.
'So,' said Hanno, tying Shinto's 12-foot 'night rope' to a tree in the corner of the guest house's front garden, a steeply pitched realm rich in mint and thistles and soilable playground equipment. We'd run through all we could think of. Which saddle straps to adjust and attach, and which to leave well alone. A trial run with the packing procedure, looping and lashing panniers and waterproof bags through brass rings and round plastic saddle horns until the two sides hung in balanced harmony. Last-minute supply essentials: a tube of stinking multi-purpose donk-ointment, a kind of stout screwdriver for scraping out Shinto's feet, and Hanno's own chunkily ethnic pullover for conditions I'd forgotten to prepare for. I'd had him do his 'Eeeuuuwwww' into the Dictaphone so I could practise at nights — one way of emptying the bunk above, if nothing else. And again and again and again that sodding knot. He eventually distilled those whorls and twists into terms a drugged Cub Scout could have grasped: the snake comes up through the well, round the tree, and back down the well.
'So,' he repeated. This was it: the hot, hard slap to the face that said I was about to be left alone, in sole charge of a sizeable farmyard being, with a trans-Iberian journey of nearly 500 miles — a journey indeed of biblical proportions — ahead of me.
'Just a minute,' I blurted, stalling desperately. 'We haven't talked about the punishment beatings.'
'Beatings?'
'Yes — I mean I'm not going to hit him, but how hard should I if I was going to?'
'No,' said Hanno, with a look bravely purged of despair. 'Not to punish. Just to make some autorité. And not in fact hitting.'
He opened the Landcruiser's heavy, battered driver's door and planted a filthy boot on the sill. 'No!' I squeaked. Then, in a slightly better voice: 'The crap. Do I have to pick up his crap? I really don't want to.'
Hanno nodded as kindly as he felt able to. 'By the finish you won't care to hold donkay shit in your fingers. By the finish you will be eating together from this.' He rapped a large knuckle against the washing-up bowl in my hands and jumped into the cab.
'By the finish?' I quavered, my pale face angled up at him.
'You will arrive in Santiago,' he said, but the pause before he said it was rather longer than I'd have preferred. And with that, and a many-pointed U-turn, this lovely big man was gone from my life.
It was all so desperate that I hardly even noticed that the room was 50 euros, a sum that I'd been told would keep a Confraternity hard-noser fed and bedded for a week. And that didn't even bag me a telly, obliging me to make my own fun by impregnating the room with the stench of sweat and crap, a stench supplied for the moment by Shinto's saddle and the thick blanket that protected him from its more chafesome straps.
I bundled both into a wardrobe, then laid all the maps and guidebooks out on the bed. Tomorrow — wince, swallow — was a
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