Have you been to the beach lately? 

We have a couple of beaches near us where Oscar and Raffles can run around off lead, as long as we’re careful. Dogs are not allowed on the beach nearest us, which is groomed for day trippers early in the morning.

If we go one way towards the monastery, we have to avoid the mean dogs who live in the squatter village up by Grandpa’s Garden. They always bark furiously and bare their teeth but if I wave my arms and talk to them sternly, they usually back off, snarling. That beach often has a lot of stuff washed up on it but people organise beach clearances from time to time and it can be OK.

This morning I had to take Raffles to the vet for his annual boosters and heartworm jab so we went the other way afterwards, to the beach near the hotel. This is what we discovered, just as a gang of workers arrived by boat to start cleaning it up for the day. Litter, pollution, washed-up dead fish of all sorts including what looked like a dead shark, plastic bottles; orange peel garnishes, endless bits of polystyrene. The debris of modern Pacific nation humanity. I even caught sight of a couple of birds nesting on a single bed mattress that had washed up overnight. I couldn’t let the boys splash in the little inlet because that was covered with scummy green algae.

Why can’t people clean up after themselves?