Equus Asinus

It has seemed for the past few weeks as though my broad-ranging life has been crammed into a narrow funnel in which I have been stuck and struggling to squeeze through to the light at the end.  A rather stupid metaphor illustrated in the photo by yet another piece of plastic which will end up contaminating the planet for the next five hundred years.

It has been a rather hectic six weeks, which included the visit of my daughter Alys for the first time since she had a long-term physical disability, and it was not the best moment for her to arrive in El Parral to see the house and the donkeys.

I was sacked from my teaching post at Elians La Nucia on the 1st March (yes, and that’s another reason for me to hate the Welsh national day!)  The reasons for this are not too complicated: I had been making too much noise about fair salaries and trying to organise the trade union in the school.  I am now fighting that dismissal. At the age of 66, I still had intended working another 2-3 years to pay off my bank loan, so it was not an entirely comfortable moment to be catapulted into living on unemployment benefit of 500 Euros a month!

As if that was not enough to be getting on with, Morris has developed the kind of front hoof problems that Aitana had last summer.  He was limping around looking quite pathetic for the past couple of weeks.  Happily, the farrier arrived today and trimmed all the donkeys’ hooves, and Morris is looking much better after the hoof re-adjustments.