An introduction from the Peasant:
Rubí donkey writes a Tuesday blog here on equusasinus called “Rubí Tuesbray” which has run for many years – on and off – but stopped for reasons nobody is clear about. Maybe she trod on her keyboard and broke it, or perhaps she was discouraged by poor reviews in the asinine burrosphere, or it’s just that she simply couldn’t be assed in the hot summer weather?
Due to the cooler weather now Rubí thinks it is time to speak up once again and reassert her protective role as matron of the herd and personal ‘life coach’ to the Peasant; also the Peasant surprised her by purchasing a new hoof-sized keyboard from Nutrivila last June for her birthday. The farm supplies shop is the first in the Comunidad Valenciana to have its own IT technician for equine social media requisites. But we have only just found out she couldn’t get her hooves under the Sellotape to remove the giftwrap and reveal the new keyboard. (Stupid Peasant!) We discovered the gift, still in its wrapping, while being stung by wasps behind the stable having disturbed a wasp nest while looking for the hiding place where Matilde donkey keeps her Andalucian Cruzcampo beer supply. Although it is not a Tuesday, Rubi Donkey has decided to write her blog.
Hello from me again its Rubí Donkey it’s always a sad time of the year when the tourist season finishes and we close the Burro de Change because I love just standing in here looking out over the customer counter. You can’t admire my hoof-sized computer keyboard as it’s here below the counter. When we open the Burro de Change again next season – starting at Easter – I can stamp on the keyboard very loudly and tell the customers, “Computer says noooooo…!” If they get annoyed, I’ll squirt them with the hand sanitiser. It’s been here on the counter since Covid and I mainly use it to annoy Morris. Anyway, the bureau will just become my blogging office for the winter season, as usual.
Some readers may ask why I’m no longer speaking in my funny Rubí grammatical constructives and wildly mad vocabulousness, but a). it’s becuse some peoples found it irritative and the other factory is that I learned better language skills these past few years of blogging, so it’s authentic I speak and write with a more literary flourish.
So how have we all been the past few months? The Peasant came back from visiting Yas and Barry – back in May on a Sunday afternoon – from seeing if their donkey derangements were suitable for the official inspection by the rude official vet in Callosa d’en Sarrià who is the official vet for the Consellería de Agricultura – and tells everyone their carefully planned equine arrangements are rubbish. When the Peasant came home he was met by two young people at the gates of “El Parral” who told him that PAVASAL the owners of the quarry had been licensed to reopen it for 15 years of mining rock and crushing it in heavy machines to make gravel. And therein began (a stupid redundant phrase I learned from the Peasant) several months of misery, despondency, ruin, stress, trauma, and much grousing.
It is not solved yet, but the Peasant has taken the quarry to Europe. When he told us donkeys he was taking the quarry to Brussels, we all thought it a clever idea because the quarry would just be a bloody annoying noise and a load of dust and dynamiting for the-average-man-on-the-Anderlecht-omnibus, as they say in those parts. The quarry would be in Brussels, and we’d have done with it. But the Peasant then explained – after we saw the quarry was still there next to us – that he meant “taking it to the European Parliament.” Well that explained why it was still here: it wouldn’t fit through the main door.
“Stop being stupid Rubí!” said the Peasant. So I went and stood in the norty corner without being told.
The Peasant spent hours looking at the sheer wall of dark greenish-grey rock of the Penya Negra and sometimes he loudly cursed it, saying it was the metamorphosis of the Devil himself. Frankly I’ve never seen devils there: I see mostly goats, wild boar and foxes. I snort at them to keep them away. Sometimes I imagine there might be crocodiles down in the Rio Xarquer, but that’s just the atavistic equus asinus africanus deep down in me.
The Peasant is a bit of a primitive sort of fellow. He was even cheered up by having a new Pope in April, as if that was going to solve the world’s problems. But there you go: he’s got this whole thing about St Francis and the interconnectedness of God’s creation. Laudato Si’ and “my Lord be praised by Sister Moon”.”… etc. Typical sandal-wearing Guardian reader!
I remember what life was like here during the Covid lockdown in 2020: the Peasant kept telling us it was wonderful. There was no distant traffic noise. No tourists flying low overhead on the flight path to Alicante and the Peasant would stand next to me, transfixed: “Listen to the birdsong! Morris donkey grumbled and said, “I don’t think it’s wonderful! I used to enjoy looking at the low flying jets and deciding if they were Ryanair or Easyjet and I’m bored!”
So the Peasant gave Morris a book to read us bed time stories during the lockdown and Morris thought this was the best ever biography of St Francis and he did not complain any more about the missing Ryanair jets, and he wondered instead if Saint Francis charged his first disciples extra for putting their bags under the seats in church and numbered reservations next to the lepers, as the priority seating amongst the poor?
Well, the Peasant came to us yesterday to make a video while we were having breakfast. When I am eating I don’t do listening: the crunching of forage in the jaws blots out all sound. I sometimes think that would be the most opportune moment for crocodiles to attack us. But then crocodiles are silent so we prolly wouldn’t notice them coming if we weren’t eating. Matilde and Aitana have a different theory but… Oh no! I just won’t go down the rabbit hole.
So the Peasant did his video, whatever it was all about, and swanned off to have a beer. He looked calmer than he has been for two weeks. But here’s the odd thing: it was long after Morning Prayer and still a bit before the short Office of Midday Prayer, but the Peasant was reciting the brief reading from 1 Peter 5: 8-9 from Compline (most Christians’ favourite short prayer offering), and he oddly adapted it with editorial changes: