Crawthorn the donkey

 

Daddy worked in a tyre remould factory; he was the foreman there and went off in a works van early each morning and got back around six. One day in the early 70s he pulled up in the van and said he had something to show us. Often this might be a big box of what we called 'pig chocolates' - these were the rejects from the chocolate factories up in York, but delicious and numerous, and that was all we six children cared about, especially the numerous bit.

But this time is wasn't pig chocolates. He reached into the back of the van and lifted out a donkey. A small donkey, admittedly, and one that looked a bit in need of TLC. It had clearly got somewhere it shouldn't have done, probably up on Halton Moor in Leeds where the travellers had their livestock. I'm sure Daddy didn't pay much for him, because he was covered all over in Sticky Burrs, those hooked teasels that play havoc with a jumper. He had hundreds on him and looked like he had rolled in the stuff. In Irish I believe they are called 'Crawthorns', though I've no idea how it is spelled. So Crawthorn was going to be his name. 

Daddy was a countryman from Mayo, though he  had been over here in England for maybe 30 years. He still had an allotment where he grew potatoes and cabbage. He still went down to our local stream and cut willow withies to weave baskets from. I'm sure that the idea of having a donkey was something that reminded him of home. We had spent many summers over in Mayo and the sound of a donkey roaring across the fields at dusk was as Mayo a sound as I can think of, just as turf smoke and Sweet Afton is the most Mayo smell. 

So Crawthorn was shorn of his Crawthorns and looked even smaller, but with a new family of admirers he soon put on weight as we set up the paddock for him. Daddy and I spent about a month building a fence all around the paddock next to our house to replace the ashpole fence that a donkey would have made short work of. Because he worked in a factory that disposed of lots of wooden pallets it was Green before its time, being completely recycled. I enjoyed learning how to put up a post properly, with a post hole wedged with bricks and a sledgehammer to drive the point down. We also built a low stable for Crawthorn, again made of recycled factory cast-offs. And when we could finally let him off his tether he had a nice quarter acre home just big enough for a small-format donkey. 

He had brains, our Crawthorn. He used to engage in a sophisticated blackmail with Daddy because when his car came up the back lane late on when he had come back from a couple of pints with his old Irish friends down at the Fernlea, Crawthorn would come galloping down the paddock to greet him, with his enormous head leaning back and his mouth getting ready for a late-night horrendous roar, which would have wakened the dead, never mind the neighbours. But he did this because he knew that Daddy had left a pile of old potatoes or apples just next to the paddock wall and would ram one of those into Crawthorn's mouth in such situations. So the bray never really came out, or was at least stifled at the last moment. 

The smallest of us used to ride him occasionally, but he wasn't very keen on it, and would sometimes give you a nip with that prognathous dentition of his. He also had a rather mean side kick that would sometimes rap your shin, but he wasn't mean. There was usually a good reason for it. We loved having a donkey there and petted him and sometimes walked him round down the lane to the front garden so that he could trim the lawn. Once a distracted cyclist fell off when he noticed him. I think once we even brought him into the house but that might have been a false memory syndrome. But he certainly got to the front step as you will see in the photo of him  I'm holding with Mammy a few years back.

We lived in the middle of town just about, and there was a big drop into our paddock and a high wall, so a few late night stumblers got the fright of their lives when the donkey brayed. And children would climb up on their way to school to drop him pieces of bread. He was omnivorous. 

And we, like the schoolchildren, loved him.