A shorter-than-usual story today. My lovely mother gave me the writing prompt ‘Loch Lomond’ and I set out to comply. I wanted to write a poignant story of the heather-bound hills, the sun spilling through the gorse and playing on the loch below. But this came out instead.
The sun burst over the hill, in a bursting sort of way that only suns have really gotten the hang of. Most celestial bodies practised some form of bursting, but the sun really shone at it. Now, it burst over the gentle slopes of Ben Lomond and carried on undaunted down to the shores of the loch, dancing over the mirror surface like an errant child. A slow sedate wind followed the sun down the valley and began to pick up the water, causing ripples and undulations which practically screamed ‘photograph me, I’m a postcard!’ at the walkers on the lakeside path.
People assume that the fabled Loch Ness Monster is one of a kind, a singular monolithic throwback to a bygone era of wanton belief and shockingly bad camera work. In this assumption people are wrong. The Loch Ness Monster, while certainly the most famous of the Loch Monsters, was not the only one by a long shot. There was a Loch Tay Monster, a creature that resembled nothing more than a giant otter, and who regularly mystified local farmers by rounding up their sheep in the night. There was a Loch Morar Monster, a quiet beast who took advantage of the awesome depth in that loch to build for itself a series of tunnels, like a hamster run, and there it swam all year long. By comparison, the monster who resided in Loch Shin, a tiny loch which reached a measly 49m depth, was as flat as a dinner plate and sat in the silt and mud of the bottom of the loch, waiting for unlucky birds to settle on the surface, whereupon it would extend its huge (49m long, to be exact) tongue and snap the fowl from the face of the water. Loch Katrine, the smallest of Scotland’s 12 Great Lochs, boasted not one but two monsters, who lived in stubborn disbelief of the other’s existence and, if they ever ran into one another, would convince themselves it was just their shadow.
And Loch Lomond is no exception. The Loch Lomond Monster was called Craig. He was old, the oldest of all the Monsters, and old Monsters, like the old of every other species in the world, were cranky. He spent most of his days circling the Isle of Inchmurrin, the huge island at the bottom of the loch, and grumbling about high and low roads. Craig was long, and sleek – none of this bulging in the middle nonsense that the Loch Ness Monster seemed to favour – and his six legs gave him an impressive turn of speed – although these days he reserved the turns of speed, and indeed any manoeuvring, to the younger Monsters.
One might ask – indeed, I hope one will, because that’s how this story will be driven forward – how the Monsters know of each other, what with each loch being fully separate. It would be a good question – thank you, one, for asking it. It was true that the Monsters had never met each other, (Except for the two in Loch Katrine, who would emphatically deny it if you asked them) but they certainly did know of each other’s existence. Whether through telepathy or by utilising a carrier pigeon-esque mode of communication (doubtful, given Loch Shin’s Monster’s habit of eating waterfowl) they all knew each other’s names, and what is more would coordinate in the summer time to attract the maximum amount of tourists. Everyone in Scotland knew that tourists were the tastiest form of succour known to man, and this common knowledge had given birth to many of Scotland’s quirks and habits. From the tourist traps (read – souvenir shops) dotted along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, to the murky illegality of Glasgow’s city centre at 3am on a Saturday morning, there were many ways to trap an unsuspecting visitor, and the Monsters were no different. Although they didn’t actually eat tourist themselves, they had long since arrived at an understanding with the Tourist Board. In a roughly clockwise order, the Loch Monsters would reveal just a bit of themselves on select weeks of the summer – a fin here, a deep dark shadow there, a glint of metallic tunnel in the case of the Loch Morar Monster – and dutifully the tourists would flock to the lochside, turning a pretty profit for the trinket sellers and merchants of midge repellent who set up shop there.
Craig was no stranger to the process. His fortnight of tourist spotlight was due to begin soon and he knew he should be sticking the tail out in the usual way, that left just enough to the imagination (was it a tail? or was it just a frolicking pike having some fun?) but he was tired of that game. He wanted more than just tricking tourists. Sure, he got the leftovers that they threw in, but it was mostly junk food and when you’re approaching 400 you have to watch the figure, even if the figure in question was a huge prehistoric water lizard.
Would it really be so bad if he skipped this year? Let it go straight to the next Monster? They could have two weeks – or, if need be, that bigheaded git from Loch Ness could have a full month. He loved the attention, just gobbled it up. He even had different costumes that he’d wear on different days, sometimes the black wetsuit which disguised him in the deep darkness, sometimes a bright orange pair of fins that would have the watching crowd in a frenzy of guesswork and wobbly cameras. No, he could have Craig’s extra time, and that freed up the Loch Lomond Monster to work on his grumbling and swimming around the United Kingdom’s largest freshwater island. He’d managed to get his time up to an impressive 2 hours per lap – no mean feat when one considered that Craig was nearly 200 metres long.
His mind made up, he turned his attention to other things. The wind played across the top of the water, swirling and painting patterns through the waves, and the sun concentrated really hard on shining. After all, it only got 2 weeks of uninterrupted shining in this country, and it wanted to make the most of it. In the waters below, a huge 200 metre long shape began to circle Inchmurrin, the largest island on Loch Lomond.
The sun burst over the hill, in a bursting sort of way that only suns have really gotten the hang of. Most celestial bodies practised some form of bursting, but the sun really shone at it. Now, it burst over the gentle slopes of Ben Lomond and carried on undaunted down to the shores of the loch, dancing over the mirror surface like an errant child. A slow sedate wind followed the sun down the valley and began to pick up the water, causing ripples and undulations which practically screamed ‘photograph me, I’m a postcard!’ at the walkers on the lakeside path.
People assume that the fabled Loch Ness Monster is one of a kind, a singular monolithic throwback to a bygone era of wanton belief and shockingly bad camera work. In this assumption people are wrong. The Loch Ness Monster, while certainly the most famous of the Loch Monsters, was not the only one by a long shot. There was a Loch Tay Monster, a creature that resembled nothing more than a giant otter, and who regularly mystified local farmers by rounding up their sheep in the night. There was a Loch Morar Monster, a quiet beast who took advantage of the awesome depth in that loch to build for itself a series of tunnels, like a hamster run, and there it swam all year long. By comparison, the monster who resided in Loch Shin, a tiny loch which reached a measly 49m depth, was as flat as a dinner plate and sat in the silt and mud of the bottom of the loch, waiting for unlucky birds to settle on the surface, whereupon it would extend its huge (49m long, to be exact) tongue and snap the fowl from the face of the water. Loch Katrine, the smallest of Scotland’s 12 Great Lochs, boasted not one but two monsters, who lived in stubborn disbelief of the other’s existence and, if they ever ran into one another, would convince themselves it was just their shadow.
And Loch Lomond is no exception. The Loch Lomond Monster was called Craig. He was old, the oldest of all the Monsters, and old Monsters, like the old of every other species in the world, were cranky. He spent most of his days circling the Isle of Inchmurrin, the huge island at the bottom of the loch, and grumbling about high and low roads. Craig was long, and sleek – none of this bulging in the middle nonsense that the Loch Ness Monster seemed to favour – and his six legs gave him an impressive turn of speed – although these days he reserved the turns of speed, and indeed any manoeuvring, to the younger Monsters.
One might ask – indeed, I hope one will, because that’s how this story will be driven forward – how the Monsters know of each other, what with each loch being fully separate. It would be a good question – thank you, one, for asking it. It was true that the Monsters had never met each other, (Except for the two in Loch Katrine, who would emphatically deny it if you asked them) but they certainly did know of each other’s existence. Whether through telepathy or by utilising a carrier pigeon-esque mode of communication (doubtful, given Loch Shin’s Monster’s habit of eating waterfowl) they all knew each other’s names, and what is more would coordinate in the summer time to attract the maximum amount of tourists. Everyone in Scotland knew that tourists were the tastiest form of succour known to man, and this common knowledge had given birth to many of Scotland’s quirks and habits. From the tourist traps (read – souvenir shops) dotted along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, to the murky illegality of Glasgow’s city centre at 3am on a Saturday morning, there were many ways to trap an unsuspecting visitor, and the Monsters were no different. Although they didn’t actually eat tourist themselves, they had long since arrived at an understanding with the Tourist Board. In a roughly clockwise order, the Loch Monsters would reveal just a bit of themselves on select weeks of the summer – a fin here, a deep dark shadow there, a glint of metallic tunnel in the case of the Loch Morar Monster – and dutifully the tourists would flock to the lochside, turning a pretty profit for the trinket sellers and merchants of midge repellent who set up shop there.
Craig was no stranger to the process. His fortnight of tourist spotlight was due to begin soon and he knew he should be sticking the tail out in the usual way, that left just enough to the imagination (was it a tail? or was it just a frolicking pike having some fun?) but he was tired of that game. He wanted more than just tricking tourists. Sure, he got the leftovers that they threw in, but it was mostly junk food and when you’re approaching 400 you have to watch the figure, even if the figure in question was a huge prehistoric water lizard.
Would it really be so bad if he skipped this year? Let it go straight to the next Monster? They could have two weeks – or, if need be, that bigheaded git from Loch Ness could have a full month. He loved the attention, just gobbled it up. He even had different costumes that he’d wear on different days, sometimes the black wetsuit which disguised him in the deep darkness, sometimes a bright orange pair of fins that would have the watching crowd in a frenzy of guesswork and wobbly cameras. No, he could have Craig’s extra time, and that freed up the Loch Lomond Monster to work on his grumbling and swimming around the United Kingdom’s largest freshwater island. He’d managed to get his time up to an impressive 2 hours per lap – no mean feat when one considered that Craig was nearly 200 metres long.
His mind made up, he turned his attention to other things. The wind played across the top of the water, swirling and painting patterns through the waves, and the sun concentrated really hard on shining. After all, it only got 2 weeks of uninterrupted shining in this country, and it wanted to make the most of it. In the waters below, a huge 200 metre long shape began to circle Inchmurrin, the largest island on Loch Lomond.