Free A Donkey in the Meadow by Derek Tangye

we were far behind in our picking, and there was a whole meadow awaiting our urgent attention. I suggested to the couple that they might like to see such a beautiful sight, and off they went. When they returned, the woman in a lofty voice said: ‘I would have thought you would have found time to pick those daffodils!’ Jeannie had to stop me from braining her.
    Once we had a visitor who looked up at the gull on the roof and asked: ‘Is it plastic?’ There was a man who arrived on a bicycle and, pointing to the pedometer on the front wheel, said: ‘I’ve ridden three hundred and seventy miles to prove to my wife that you are not fictitious!’ Another time we had a carload of people whose car got stuck at Monty’s Leap, the low-slung chassis was jammed on the bed of the stream; they were there for four hours. We have had strangers who have brought us presents. We frequently met people with whom afterwards we kept in touch; and at all times Jeannie and I found it a wonderfully rewarding experience that any of these people had taken the trouble to find their way to Minack.
    Such visits, however, inevitably took time because we could not just say hello and goodbye. Tasks we were performing had to be suspended and, if they were tedious tasks like hand weeding the freesia beds, we often found it difficult to return to them. The nature of the visit was likely to have disturbed our sense of routine, and we were inclined to relax and await the possible arrival of another visitor.
    Our usual procedure was first to show these visitors the gull on the roof, provided one of the gulls was there; but it was maddening how often Knocker, Squeaker or Peter would let us down, and would only sail into view after the visitors had disappeared up the lane. Boris, the drake, however, could always be relied upon. He enjoyed attention as long as no one tried to touch him. He squatted imperiously in the shade of the flower house or in the grass by the elms, eyeing the strangers, stretching his neck forward towards them, hissing gently at them if they seemed to be coming too close, hissing loudly if they did and at the same time raising the feathers on the top of his head as a cat will lift its fur in anger. Then he would rise majestically to his large yellow webbed feet and waddle away, waggling his olive-green tail feathers in protest.
    Lama’s behaviour, as one might expect, was unpredictable. Sometimes she was in a sociable mood and she would appear jauntily with a hop, skip and a miaow. At other times she would remain obstinately in her hiding places while we rushed round the usual sites bleating for her. At last the visitor would say: ‘Don’t bother to look any more. It doesn’t matter. We didn’t come specially to see her.’ Then, of course, Lama in a trice would be with us.
    There were many occasions, however, when people did come specially to see her. Her particular attraction was that she had been a wild cat; a cat who had spent extreme youth in the cold but now was conquered by comfort, an irresistible situation for cat admirers, a cat who had been tamed, a human victory over the feline species. Jeannie and I, on these occasions, would anxiously watch how she would behave because there was one thing she loathed and that was sugary flattery. Any visitor who tried to win her that way was beneath her contempt. Hence if someone began cooing at her in the manner so often adopted towards cats, Lama would stiffen in disgust. I have often seen her in the arms of a visitor who was cooing like mad, have seen the danger signal, then leapt forward and snatched her away a split second before harm was done.
    The presence of the donkeys now produced a major diversion. Sometimes I had found a conversation difficult to sustain and I would stare out to sea, the visitor beside me, murmuring foolishly over and over again: ‘Isn’t it a glorious view?’ There was now no fear of a faltering conversation, no cause for me to fill a silence with an