We were on our way back, all the way down to Lochness, where I planned to have a good look to see if I couldn't see the monster that so many people had apparently seen, but it's existence had never been proved. Thinking of the cold deep waters of my loch, Loch Voile, where sometimes huge fish jumped out of the water, I could well imagine that strange and wonderful things lived deep down in the blackness.
On the way down we stopped at a famous fish and chip restaurant, famous because Princess Diana's grandmother used to go there a lot, and there were pictures of the Princess and her Grandmother having a meal, and it looked like they had a real good time.The proprietress was very proud of her famous customer and her granddaughter, but she was also a delightful lady, and we enjoyed her stories about the famous writer of many love stories.
At Lochness I sat for ages trying to see into the deep darkness of the loch, but it was a murky day, and I couldn't see nothing. But I remembered a lovely story that Jess Smith, a Tinker woman told on a cd she gave me one night at the launching of 'The Last Wolf', a book by Jim Crumley, a writer I came to know when working at the Kingshouse Hotel.
There was once a gluttonous and selfish woman, as big as a grown ox, with thick arms and huge splayed feet that were swollen round like two balloons. She made her husband and son work from morning till night, and all the money they earned she saved in a flower vase, feeding them just enough to stay alive, while she bought mountains of food that she gulped down when they were at work. But for some time she had been saving to buy beef on the farmers market, where only the best beef was sold. So on the morning of the market she counted her money, and danced around gleefully, as she had enough saved for plenty of beef. She fed her husband and son only a crust of dry bread, and told them not to come home before midnight, and off she
went to the market.
In the meantime a demon cat with sharp nails and yellow glowing eyes had crept into her tent, and went to sleep on the bracken in the darkest corner. Peggy came home with the best beef from the market, and as the meat sizzled and the fat splattered, her mouth dribbled from lust, and she could hardly wait for it to cook. But at last the meat was done, and she devoured it by tearing off huge bits and almost swallowing it without chewing. 'Och, ye bonny wee meaty', she moaned between bites, smacking her huge lips, and when she was finished she sank onto her side of the tent, and promptly went to sleep.
The demon cat now woke up, and smelling the meat, he felt the hunger pangs in his tummy, and when he saw Peggy sleeping deeply, he silently went up to her, and stood over her, his yellow eyes aglow. Peggy woke up then, and if the demon cat thought he would frighten and eat her, he was mistaken, as she suddenly grabbed him and threw him across the tent. A huge struggle then started, and the two growled and bit, and rolled down to the loch, flattening bracken and small trees that were in their way, and then into the loch they rolled.
They kept on fighting, and slowly sank to the bottom, making the water churn and gurgle, until both were drowned.
Nobody saw this, except an evil Sea Kelpie, who dived down to the bottom of the loch to tell the demon king of the darkness about it, and the demon king decided to give both Peggy Moore, and the cat, immortality to fight on forever. So, when they occasionally came close to the surface, and the water started churning, and people saw what look like a monster, remember this: it is the small head and big groping arm of Peggy Moore trying to kill the monster cat that they would have seen.