Writing the hind leg off a donkey

I listen to a documentary programme on the radio. I listen because, often, it gives me a bit more insight into Spain. Sometimes the programmes are a bit esoteric. It's fine when it's something like the history of the Galician whale hunters of the 17th Century but less so when the title; is Who was Elena Fortún - the author of Celia?

There was a programme a couple of weeks ago about Zenobia Camprubí. It took me a couple of days to get around to listening to the podcast. It didn't sound like the acoustic equivalent of a page turner. In fact it turned out to be a pretty good programme. Zenobia was most famous for being the force behind her husband, a Spanish poet called Juan Ramón Jiménez, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956 just a couple of years before he died.

I recognised the name - the Juan Ramón that is - because the school where I work is named after him.

I  did a bit of research, well I skimmed the Wikipedia entry about Jimenez. His most famous piece is called Platero y yo. Platero and me. Platero is a donkey and the poem is about rural life and the friendship between a boy and a donkey. I read the fifty odd page poem the other day though most of it was way a bit too flowery for my rudimentary Spanish. And suddenly I understood why the school incorporates a very squared up drawing of a donkey in its paperwork.

It reminded me of that James Burke programme from the 1970s - Connectons.