When I was a kid we used to go a lot on holidays to Cornwall with my extended family, because my paternal grandmother would not be parted from her dogs for longer than about sixteen seconds (they slept on a proper human bed next to her), so she couldn't go abroad under the rabies laws back then. One place we used to go was a farm park where you could ride donkeys amongst other things (they also had other things I remember with deep fondness like an enormous ball pool with, of all things, an actual diving bell suspended above which you could climb into via a rope ladder). Anyway one of the Donkeys was called Marmite, and he was my favourite donkey. I used to have hella adorable speech impediments so I pronounced his name 'mardite' and would always implore for a ride on 'mardite the donkey'. Anyway, one year Marmite was no longer there, and I was enormously sad because I thought he'd died or something. Now, near where I live on the Isle of Wight is a place called Carisbrooke Castle, where one of the attractions is that the well there still has like medieval gear to use donkeys in a wheel to haul up buckets of water, which they do every quarter of an hour. Thus they have a bunch of donkeys in awesome donkey stables. About six or seven years ago, I went up there and was kinda bored so I swung by the donkey stables and since the last time I had been there they had put up little plaques with biographies of the various donkeys. Apparently most of them are rescued or retired riding donkeys from farm parks or beach rides and holy shit, what did I see but the name Marmite, retired from a farm park in Cornwall, and there the old fellow was, pushing 40, but still clopping about and eating hay and whatever other shit it is that donkeys do. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
TLDR; donkeys are fucking awesome.
