Shed meat

Every now and again you come across a Camino angel who has set up a rest spot for us. It's usually a stall or a shed, sometimes, such as this, someone's garage. There are chairs, sometimes there's a stamp for our credentials, often there's some food and drinks, very occasionally a bathroom, and everything is donation based. I wandered in looking at the photos, not looking for anything else as I'd only put 50m between me and my last bathroom break, disguised as a coffee break.

A man came out from his adjoining kitchen and settled himself behind the table with the stamp and ink pad on it, ready to receive my credential. On learning I'm Australian he took me slowly around the space pointing out every skerrick of Australiana he'd amassed, including postcards (kookaburra and Mt Gambia), $5 and $10 notes, and on his necklace, a wooden kangaroo.

He imitated a kookaburra and noted it was a long way away, then scurried into the kitchen telling me to wait there. When he came back out he was holding a slice of cured meat he'd clearly just cut, gesturing excitedly to his thigh. I made appreciative noises which incited him to go back, get a big knife, and open a different door off the shed, again telling me to wait.

After a minute or so he came out and beckoned me in with the knife. Proving the point that white women die first in horror movies for a reason, I was too polite not to, so followed the man with the knife into the dark, wondering if that meat I had before was maybe from a human thigh?

I was reassured, therefore, to see the trotter on what he was now carving me bits off. On showing me its severed, eyeless head, he explained it was a boar he'd shot himself. I successfully advocated for the cat circling both our ankles, and it was given a small amount too.

One hand full of boar, I shook his with my other, and chuffed off.Okumaya devam et