Almost every large body of water in the world has a monster. Nessie is only the most famous.

Evidence comes in by dribs and drabs. Plenty of sightings, but the photographs are always teasingly ambiguous (or faked.)

And then there are the sea monsters.

What are these things? I want them to be plesiosaurs, but the weight of probability is against it. Loren Coleman (and he's the man) suggests that they're a rare breed of long necked seal. That really does cut them down to size.

I have been fascinated by them all my life. When I was a very small kid I has scared of paddling out into the sea in case a monster came swimming by.

Actually, that fear has never gone away.

I was never scared of sharks or jelly-fish or things like that- real things that posed a real threat. Only of these hypothetical things that posed a hypothetical threat.

There are no cases on record- not recent cases anyway- of lake or sea monsters hurting anyone. The threat is purely metaphysical. I'm afraid of them (and love them) because they're uncanny.

Things half seen, of indeterminate size and shape, slip-sliding through the dark.

What do they symbolise? Is it something to do with sex? Is it something to do with God?

I can't quite grasp it.

There's a chap about to go down into Loch Ness with a state of the art submarine. Perhaps he'll come back with a long-necked seal on a leash.

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.