What's Happened to Scotland's Love Affair with Nessie?
THERE hasn't been a good Loch Ness Monster story for ages. Despite accounts of a monster stretching back to the time of the Pictish King Nechtan II, during the last few years the only point worth making about the monster is that Nessie has been notable for her absence.
What has happened to her, or people's imagination?
Everyone from the traders in Drumnadrochit to Visitscotland is desperate for a new sighting or, at the very least, some slightly crackpot, rich scientist to arrive weighed down by new-fangled sonar equipment in a final attempt to prove that Nessie is, indeed, still skulking under the grey choppy waters.
In the past, hardly a summer went by without an alert, but recently, except for the few die-hard monster-hunters and the inevitable bus loads of elderly tourists and hungry lochside traders, interest in Nessie seems to have died off.
This lack of concern for one of the most famous characters in Scottish history has probably come as some relief to our politicians in their eagerness to paint Scotland as a high-tech, no-nonsense, hard-headed nation of the 21st century.
Such a view, however, is dangerously myopic. I don't know how much money the Loch Ness Monster has made for this country, particularly for local traders and hoteliers, but it must be a great deal more than any of the painfully short-lived investments made by foreign manufacturers in the country's near defunct Silicon Glen.
After all, is there another nation that could turn something that may, just possibly, not exist into one of the world's most beloved tourist attractions?
IT wasn't always like this.
In the past, even the most sober newspapers have chosen to shelve common sense whenever there has been the faintest of chances that Nessie had made, or was about to make an appearance.
I remember being closely questioned by a London newsdesk on whether the monster had actually been moving or was sitting still when a passing underwater video camera caught her, or "something", deep in the middle of the loch about 16 years ago.
I had to stifle the urge to shout back that it wasn't a flipping plesiosaur and much more likely was a rock, a shoal of minnows or the fevered imagination of the sonar operator.
The lesson quickly learned was, of course, that we all suspend reality when it comes to the monster; it is rather like writing a Mills & Boon novel: the writer first has to believe in the plot, no matter how outlandish, if the reader is going to take it at all seriously.
Seventy five years ago this summer, no correspondent hesitated when called on by his news editor to catch the night train from King's Cross to Inverness. The Loch Ness Monster had at last been sighted without a shadow of a doubt and a reward of £20,000 was offered for its capture.
Among the several sightings in 1933, was that of Mr George Spicer and his wife, who spotted it, not in the water but, terrifyingly, trundling crossing the road with a dead animal in its mouth.
Intense speculation grew to such a level that there was some kind of carnivorous, prehistoric monster roaming the banks and slipping into the icy waters whenever anyone got near, that the Secretary of State for Scotland issued an order to the police instructing them to prevent anyone attacking the creature.
However, judging by the descriptions, it was by no means the benign, winking animal depicted in the shops of Drumnadrochit. No one in his right mind would have approached a creature which looked like a cross between a giant, flippered eel and a hippopotamus with teeth the size of tent pegs.
SOwhy has interest abated? My theory is that it was the arrival of the scientists determined to use the most modern technology available to either prove Nessie was there or could not exist. These have taken away some of the mystery and have replaced the casual sightings with the cold scientific approach of the microscope. It is hardly in the spirit of monster hunting.
Technological studies really began during the 1960s and since then have been carried out with various degrees of professionalism, using everything from sonar to biological evidence.
One of the most prolific has been the American Robert Rines, who actually bought a lochside cottage in which to live during his summer trips.
Rines is expected to return for his last trip this summer – he is now aged 85 – and remains convinced there is, or was, a monster. He now believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming, although the temperature of the waters of Loch Ness have not changed.
This may be a neat explanation for the recent disappearance, but sounds more like Rines attempting to close down the 1,500-year-old hunt because he cannot take part for much longer.
The Loch Ness Monster may, or may not be there. But the only way to continue the search is in the old way, as in the 1930s. Hunters should travel down the lochside, preferably on the southern bank at dusk where the gloom, the darkening trees and the leaden waters are guaranteed to put even the most steely nerves on edge.
In such circumstances, it is hard not imagine that a giant creature exists somewhere in the 754 feet of icy, peatblackened water. I feel another sighting is imminent.
Daily Express: 16th April 2008
