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Seemingly alone in a deserted Greek town, Morris prepares to cross the Atlantic to do battle with his nemesis. But first, he must find Norman, his missing donkey.

Just as I was about to give up, as the first flutter of hopelessness began to brush my cheek, as I was walking out of the town donkeyless, a young woman came around the corner leading a reluctant Norman edging behind her.

I'm sure it wasn't my imagination when I say that as our eyes met there was an almost magical connection, a deep, inner, secret joy that we shared between the moments as two of the most beautiful, long lashed, syrupy eyes this side of Ludlow met mine across the dusty street.

Norman's eyes met mine and my heart soared like a canister of helium from the bottom of the ocean.

I raced up the street and threw my arms around Norman, my Donkey brother, my hairy compadre and my best friend four-legged friend since Jonathan the Shropshire Horse.

I'm not ashamed to I cried like I haven't cried since I saw that episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where Data's daughter dies.

Is this your donkey, Morris?

Coincidentally, the woman leading Norman had rather nice eyes too.

She turned out to be a shepherdess, venturing into town to buy goat treats. She's blonde, slender, very friendly and bears quite a resemblance to a woman I used to know from Bridgnorth who used to go hang-gliding blindfolded.

She's called Britney, which is apparently a common shepherdess name hereabouts.

An interesting girl, she has excess brain fluid that drains into a little bag just above her ear, she has to change it every few hours.

To be fair, she has decorated the bag with a few sequins and a silk trim, but it still falls a few thousand miles short of being attractive.

So, reunited with Norman, I'm not totally despondent.

I may not have all of Milo's resources, I might not have successfully relocated an entire town, I might not have the best oratory skills, most polished appearance or access to a giant helicopter - but I do have the inexhaustible resource of Salopian enthusiasm and my very own donkey.

Empires have been overthrown with far less.

Due to the dangerous nature of my continuing mission, and the possible violent confrontation that awaits me in New Jersey I shall be leaving Norman when I get to the airport, although I haven't told him this yet, I 'm waiting for the right moment.

Britney says she likes me and will tag along for a couple of days before returning to her goats.

I spent the day telling Britney all about how great Shropshire is, green, plentiful and full of goat related opportunities for a young shepherdess.

She tells me that "tall men in a silver ship" visited her last year, and they borrowed a number of her goats for experimental purposes.

They returned the goats unharmed a few months later, but the abductee animals then started to give birth to unusual offspring, half goat things with tentacles instead of legs and hands instead of horns.

I was initially sceptical, but she produced a few photos and I was forced to concede that she did indeed have an otherworldly flock hidden up in the Greek hills.

The new breed is by all accounts dextrous, affectionate and highly intelligent, Britney has trained some of them to play board games, sing accapello and do rudimentary mathematics.

She asked me what I thought she should do about them, after some thought I suggested relocating and starting a tourist attraction in Shropshire.

There's a farm outside Market Drayton where people pay £5 a head to go and look at ducks and sheep, imagine what they'd pay to play backgammon with a singing octogoat.

She seemed quite keen and I sense she may be yet another Morris Telford success story and be relocating to Shropshire in the near future.

Britney left at teatime, she said she'd had a lovely time but needed to get back and check on her mutant goats and I respected that.

Apparently they can get quite agitated if left alone for to long, they argue over the correct use of the en passant move in chess and it can come to blows.

So it's just Norman, the open road and me.

By donkey it's quite a way to the nearest airport, I worry that subconsciously I am deliberately using delay tactics.

Maybe it's because I don't want to leave Norman, maybe it's because I am worried what I will find in Slatington, I'm not sure.

I rang home and Aunt Felicity told me to concentrate on the important things, so I spent the rest of the day thinking about Gingerbread and Ironbridge. It helped considerably.

I met a man by the road today. He was barefoot, wearing leather pants, a rubber t-shirt, ripped in places and fastened back together by safety pins, and his hair was brightly coloured and of differing lengths, much like the style of seventies punks.

He was sweating like a man who had been sitting in the sun all day wearing a rubber t-shirt.

He told me his name was Lysander Filthy and he was going to liberate the world through the medium of revolutionary music.

He did bear a passing resemblance to Glen Matlock, but with a Greek accent thicker than frozen yoghurt.

I asked him how he intended to revolutionise anything by sitting at the side of the road, I regretted asking the question as this prompted him to get out a kazoo and perform, one by one, in a mixture of Greek, English and some sort of barking all the songs he had written over the past 8 years.

He continued until he passed out from what was either dehydration or an impressive attempt to rhyme the word "inflammatory".

It took quite some time, and some of the songs were quite good, although they were mostly about how unfair it was that the Sex Pistols had never toured Greece, and how difficult it was expressing yourself artistically when you live with your parents above a newsagents.

I revived him, gave him some water and left him with a note explaining the accepting and creative musical environment present in Shrewsbury, and the name of a couple of pubs that might be interested in kazoo-themed neo-punk.

I also suggested he widen his musical horizons and maybe considered some Chas n Dave or Mike Batt.

Then I borrowed his kazoo, paused only momentarily to sterilise it with my travel kettle, and gave a quite moving rendition of the old Shropshire folksong "My Loved One Lives In Quatt Village, But The Bus Only Stops At Kidderminster".

I could tell Lysander was genuinely impressed and seriously reconsidering his musical influences. Revolutionary music to liberate the world?

Look no further than the wild untamed beast that is Shropshire folk music.

There was a time, many years ago now, before I became the adventurer/philosopher/man of the world I am today, when I used to sit in an office with absolutely nothing to do all day.

It's a common and essential role in today's modern office framework, someone has to be on hand to take on all those ad-hoc duties, and if they are busy doing other more specific duties they won't be available to do the ad-hoc ones when they come along.

Some argue that if ad-hoc duties come along then staff could stop doing less important duties, like telephone wiping and recycle bin emptying, but for a business to run at optimum efficiency, you need that core team of staff who have nothing to do all day on standby, just in case something really important does come up.

Then the staff who are really experienced at doing nothing learn to prioritise any ad-hoc duties that come their way, arguing that if they stopped doing nothing and started doing the task that has come up, a more important task might come along and they would be less able to cope with doing that if they started taking on just any old job that comes up and they had better just be on the safe side and find someone else to do anything that crops up so they are then left doing nothing again, poised for that really important business critical ad hoc duty that could crop up any moment.

The reason I mention all this, I've spent the day sat on a donkey, travelling through the most desolate, barren and boring terrain since they erected the crash barriers all the way along the A529.

It reminded me of those long days in the office, trying to make time pass, it's often far harder doing nothing all day than it is actually working.

According to the map on my palmtop, I should be near an airport now, but according to my eyes I am in the middle of the desert with nothing but arid landscape as far as the horizon on all sides.

I've decided to trust my palmtop and head north towards the city centre that isn't there.

I'm sure everything will turn out fine, but I'm a little worried that I didn't bring more provisions with me, I expected to be in the hub of civilisation now, masterminding a triumphant entrance to Milo's stronghold of deceit in America.

Instead it's just me, Norman and a barren landscape with only a tin of pear slices left between us.

I rang Mother for advice, she told me to wrap up warm, mind my language, not speak to any strangers and always open doors for ladies over 25.

I said I'd take all this on board, then shared the pear slices with Norman.

Unfortunately they were "best before 27/04/2001" and each slice had grown a sort of rubbery protective shield and tasted like bleach.

Norman seemed to quite enjoy them though.