Well done! You reached here after such a daunting title. Never fear, I have not embarked upon an adult education course, apart from those channels/websites you don’t tell your Mother about.

So that’s the first goal achieved. The second is to define Pastoralism: this is nothing religious, more the practice of letting your cattle graze on open land rather than enclosed fields. The odd thing is that the spell checker does not recognise the word or the word recognise! Ignoring the ex colonials and their zees, we move on.

Some of you may know, I often spend a Sunday afternoon, with Margot, Sara and friends, picking plastic from our windswept East Coast. We are just finishing the maintenance clean up of a site we cleaned last year or the year before. It was the worst site we had worked on, covered in plastic debris, blown 500 metres or more inland. But this time, we are just cleaning the seafront and the new debris that has blown inland.

It’s a lovely area, to the South, the entrance to Lagoen, to the North the Spelunk lighthouse. Very rocky, some sand and with Cacti growing more as you move away from the salty sea spray. Oh, and goats! This is the nub of the story.

A few centuries ago, between 5 and 6, the Spanish or Dutch, or both, introduced goats to the island. It was to provide fresh meat for those based here and also to supply the ships when they returned to Europe. The goats were never raised in fields but left to feed on the open land. It is a poor habitat, especially in the dry season, and the goats have to wander far afield to graze. But goats always seem to come home at night so it is easy to be a goat farmer in this respect. No field maintenance, just let the goats out and then they come home.

So to this day, that is the way the majority of goat farmers raise their goats. They see it as their right to let the goats go anywhere and then get upset if any harm comes to their goats. With the increasing population on the island, and taking into account the damage that goats do (not fully accepted by all here), there is a strategic plan for all goats to be moved to enclosed grazing with the next years. Of course, it will take longer to enforce, if ever.

My house, as all others, has fences and walls. Not just for security but also to keep out the local goats, owned by a guy at the bottom of the hill. Every day, the goats wander up hill, through the residential area to graze. The owner has no pretensions about owning the grazing land, we just have nice plants if we leave our gates open. Not his problem if the goats get in, just we have to pay if we kill a goat driving on our streets. But hey! Live and let live.

Not so today. Sara, who does not chase goats – did once and has learned a lesson – was accompanying the plastic pickers on this, once again, beautiful spot. The goats were happily eating on the South end of the plot and we were working on the North. It’s immaterial where they are , as they move away from Sara and she prefers human contact. Well, apart from digging holes under rocks to terrify the lizards.

Suddenly 2 men arrived. One walking from the hill and the other from a pickup truck. The younger, from the truck, was waving a machete and screaming about the dog. The older guy was walking to Brave Craig, who had picked Sara up and was taking her to my car.

I will keep it short but, the previous day a dog killed one of their goats. They have painted signs saying no dogs on the land. HOWEVER, they say they have a permit to graze their goats, they do not have the rights to ban access for anyone (and their dogs). It is highly unlikely they have a permit as the land has been sold to a multi millionaire who wants to develop the land and doesn’t want goats. He would prefer, I am sure, a plastic free area.

I am against the development of this area, I sympathise with the goat owner for the loss of his animal. I despise people who own aggressive dogs who cannot control them and allow them to kill goats. I would love we can all access this land responsibly.

So I almost side with the goat farmer. BUT, he did nothing with the land. It was covered in plastic, probably ingested by his goats. He stated he did not give a F*** that we had cleaned the land, that my dog was not bothering his goats and was happy with the pretension he “owned” this land.

So for him, the colonisation, that introduced goat farming, in a pastoral manner is a tradition. The ecological affects of goats and plastic mean nothing to him.

He was very angry, due to the loss of a goat the previous day and our ignoring his signs – which have no legal value.

He pissed me off, I’m not going back to clean a part of the island he ignores. I pissed him off by taking a well behaved dog, within the law, to clean “his” land.

I can go elsewhere and clean up. He will, within years, not be allowed to allow his goats free roam grazing and destruction of the flora.

I guess we all know pig headed individuals, not willing to change their minds. But sometimes, they bring up one thing that is true and you can understand that point. Shame, they never understand any of yours!