Anyway, after a power nap I woke up to get breakfast before my second lone shepherding experience. Last time had gone as good as I could hope but they had almost killed me both by giving me near heart murmurs, or literally causing me to pass out with exhaustion after chasing them down and up very steep sections of the land that makes up this particular mountain range. I am convinced that they were just trying to mess with me because it was my first time, but it could well have been that I was so paranoid and tense that it rubbed off on the goats. Either way, last time I had relaxed a lot more by the end, and more importantly I had got them all back into their shed in exactly the same state as before, if not a little fatter.
So this time I was going to play this much more coolly. I had done it once,
I was more confident, experienced and knew which ones to watch.And it went brilliantly. I like to think it was a combination of both my goatherding skills as well as the goats behaving that it meant they never threatened to disappear into some jungle.
In fact this time is was so much more relaxed that I even had time to take one or two pictures! Ok, I it literally was one or two, but considering last time I found myself constantly trying to prevent a goat from running off, 2 pictures is a big step. But better than that, I enjoyed myself. In fact I was having such a good time that at one of the longer stops, anybody in the local valleys would have heard that ‘the hills were alive with the sound of music’. It was quite impressive really. There I was, on top of a ridge pocking out of the rainforest around me surrounded by goats, singing the likes of ‘Jerusalem’, or ‘Swing Low’ at the top of my lungs. It was just as if Maria was standing there with her arms wide and singing to the mountains (the only difference being I wasn’t wearing a nun’s outfit with an apron and I was singing at least 2 octaves lover, if that’s possible). I sang all the songs I could remember either from the Abbotsholme song book or from our Tuesday song practices with Mr Moon in chapel. The image of Maria singing to the mountains was slightly dented when I ran out of classic songs to sing and I moved on to various renditions of hip hop tracks like Low and Lean Back. You never know Maria may have had a secret collection of T-Pains or FloRida’s tracks. But it was good fun all the same and I may have got some of the local wild life into a different genre to the typical bird song they hear every day. Ha ha.
Needless to say, the time flew by and I enjoyed the time to myself (if you don’t count the 40 goats standing around me). But it was nice and so much more relaxing than before.
I’m thinking of really testing my goatherding skills by taking the goats on a different route next time I shepherd. I’ll probably scout it out first just to make sure I really know it, but I think I may try and take them along the ridge. Well we’ll see but I’ve set myself a challenge now.
Better go
ciao
