A Goat of Many Colours

   We’d won a goat. We couldn’t believe it, a real live goat! This awesome event happened at a fund raiser for the local village school. My husband bought several tickets and paid in drachmes which was the currency of the time. Seated with our friends at a table laden with delicious Cretan food we drank red wine while Cretan musicians and dancers entertained the gathering. The young and able bodied danced. The not so able bodied danced too but didn’t try the intricate steps required for high jumps or for balancing on a glass placed on the neck of a bottle.

   Silence fell when the drawing of tickets was about to begin. The master of ceremonies called out numbers which meant a prize for the holder of that ticket. My husband said that he wasn’t lucky, he never won anything. ‘Never say never’ – because he certainly was lucky that night by becoming the proud owner of a goat. Panic overtook him as he was clapped and cheered on the way to claim his prize. Self consciously he asked if perhaps he could swop the goat for a radio, a clock, a picture frame or maybe a bottle of Raki. ‘Not possible,’ he was told but he could have the goat freezer ready if he preferred. This was not an option but what were we to do?

   Advice came from all sides, ‘get a second goat to keep  her company,’ ‘build a nice little shed for her,’ ‘tie her to a post and move her around the garden on the half hour,’ ‘put very high fencing all around your land,’ ‘don’t let her escape because she’ll eat a complete garden in less than an hour,’ ‘keep your clothes line at least a few kilometers away from her,’ ‘set your alarm for four in the morning and milk her at the same time in the evening - she must have a routine.’ Thankfully our Cretan friend Manolis offered to look after our goat. He would do this on condition that the babies would be his. We were delighted and very relieved. We asked him to call her Venus and we promised to visit her from time to time.

   Manolis had reservations about her name but he agreed to call her Venus when the neighbours were not listening. We visited our darling Venus and she was a beautiful little animal. Her coat which was snow white had three brown spots on the back and a brown spot between her ears. She seemed to smile at us and looked really happy with her lot amongst other fine goats. The next time we passed the farm Manolis was at the gate. “My friends’ he beamed ‘you come to see your baby Venus. She’s doing fine. I’ll get her.’ He did but this goat was black and the only white was on the tip of her tail. I tried to say that he had the wrong goat but Manolis looked so proud of this animal and so pleased to show her to us that we stayed quiet.

   ‘Manolis made a mistake’ my husband said when we were driving away. ‘He just got confused and I didn’t want to make a fuss.’ ‘Me neither’ I replied ‘but I didn’t see a white goat there like Venus; did you? Let’s go back next week and we’ll pick her out ourselves.’ We couldn’t wait to reassure ourselves about the welfare of Venus but next time Manolis brought us a brown goat with white splashes across her flank. ‘Oh Venus,’ he said softly, ‘you are the most beautiful goat I’ve ever had on my farm.’ I pointed out that this goat was not our Venus. Our beauty had a white coat with brown spots – where is she, where is our Venus? ‘But this is Venus,’ Manolis insisted. ‘Don’t you know that you have a goat of many colours?’