Donkeys

Sunday was the big day for the South East Region of the Donkey Breed Society, the day of their show at Hook Road Arena. This is at least the second time they have been at the Arena, having been previously at the nearby Horton Country Park - where one might have thought that proximity to the polo playing Equus Equestrian Centre would have given the event a bit more tone than the rather proletarian - if very practical - Hook Road Arena. Ask the other place about 'donkey' to get the full gen.

An interesting, if not very large event with maybe as many as 25 participating horse boxes and 50 participating donkeys. One of the horse boxes came from as far away as Bristol.

Some of the interest was generated by the humans involved, something of a caricature of the sort of people who turn up at country shows at places like Honiton. Black hats, tweed jackets, wellington boots and whips. Ladies of various sizes, shapes and ages in very short tweed jackets and tight tan trousers. Floral dresses and elaborate, matching hats. The sort of hat which might have been bought and then trimmed by the new owner with material left over from her dress.

There was a stand from the brook (see http://www.thebrooke.org/) selling various summer fête stall stuff, most of it donkey flavoured.

There was a lonely Poitou donkey, a great big thing with a very hairy chest, with hair in what looked a bit like dreadlocks. Wikipedia knows all about them, a variety of donkey which used to be used in France to breed large size working mules and which came very close to extinction at one point.

I learned that proper donkeys, like those illustrated, are marked (first) with the Sign of the Cross, the result of one of their number having carried Our Lord into Jerusalem. The cross takes the form of two black crests of hair, one across the shoulders and the second cutting across it, running along the spine. Best seen in these grey donkeys.

The inside of their front legs are marked (second) with chestnuts or ergots, these marks being more or less absent on the inside of their back legs. A left over of evolution, like the appendix, in this case something to do with feet rather than with stomachs.

I was sufficiently impressed by all this for donkeys to be included in my waking dream this morning. I was in some sort of work environment involving a Polish girl of mid twenties and a large window overlooking a busy motorway. When along came a large cortege, probably travellers, which caused something of a backup by doing a slow turn right across said motorway. The centre piece of the cortege was a large, luminous, translucent object the size and general shape of a large caravan but also associating to diamond. The sort of magic object which turns up in science fiction films, sometimes with Dustin Hoffman. One assumed that there was a casket at the centre of the thing but could not quite make it out. Bringing up the rear was a procession of donkeys, showing their crosses loud and clear, perhaps appropriately for a funeral.

PS: dream clearly rather unreliable about Hoffman. The film called 'The Sphere' doesn't look quite right in Wikipedia. But I shall check it out properly.