Some years ago I spent an afternoon with the late Mr. Ronnie Bremner, founder and then curator of the Loch Ness Monster Exhibit and Museum in Drumnadrochit, Scotland. He'd overheard me mentioning to another tourist in the museum's gift shop that I had a copy of a book on Nessie written by the equally late Mr. F.W. Holiday. When I was a kid I had a fascination with the Loch Ness Monster and at one point I systematically had gone through the local bookstore's book catalog and had bought a copy of every book then in print on the subject as I could raise the cash.
That book never sold well and by the time I was old enough to finance my own trip to Scotland, it was out of print and considered quite rare. Mr. Bremner took from the fact that I should have a copy of what he called, "the Holiday book" that I must have had a serious interest in the mysteries of Loch Ness so he graced me with the nickel tour of his private collection.
One of the stories he told me was about this Mr. Holiday, who just recently had died. Mr. Bremner said Mr. Holiday was a touch eccentric and completely obsessed with finding Nessie. He apparently believed that the creature had a sort telepathy and could sense when anyone was watching for it. So when he went Nessie-watching, he'd set up his camera and tripod with the lens trained on the loch, then he'd sit down next to it
with his back to the water. At irregular intervals, he would snap his head around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nessie in a moment of inattention.
And if he took the notion to drive around the loch for a while, searching as he drove, he would stand and shout toward the loch, [Scottish Brogue] "Right, I'm giving up the searching now. I'm getting into my car and driving straight away from the loch, so if Nessie should come out now, I'd be far away and have no chance atall to see her." [/Scottish brogue] Then he'd get into his car and spend the rest of the afternoon driving the roads that circle the loch, with one eye on the road and the other trained on the water.
So maybe Mr. F.W. Holiday was just ahead of his time. Maybe he should have been a chupacabra hunter instead.
