I am going on holiday! At last! My last proper holiday dates back from May 2004 when I spent four weeks travelling round Sardinia and mainland Italy with my best friend K. in a beat up van which suffered quite a lot during that fortnight. We had a thing for going off road.

After that break, I, unwillingly, turned into a workaholic and when I left my old job in September 05, I still had all my annual leave left which made for a nice sum of money being deposited into my account. Needless to say it was spent shortly after.

Anyway, now nearly two years on, Ilse is taking a break! Be it only one week but that will do me (and my tired old body) just fine. No beaches, no palmtrees, no pools, no pubs serving English breakfasts and organising karaoke nights in the evening.

Nope, the man and I are going to Scotland, somewhere on the edge of Loch Ness which will supply me with all the peace and quiet a girl can hope for.

There's me thinking: Great, perhaps I will find the monster, become famous worldwide for finally solving the mystery and I will be respected by fellow 'monster' hunters and their groupies alike.

But then I saw this article in the Times and gone were my dreams of travelling to conventions, presenting my findings and receiving standing ovations. Someone has beaten me to it!

Paleontologists seem to have 'solved' the riddle of Loch Ness. They state that unexplained sighthings of a monster in the loch could, in fact, be of an elephant. They claim the idea of Nessie was dreamt up a a magnificient piece of marketing by a circus impressario after he saw one of his elephants bathing in the loch.

When travelling circuses stopped on the banks of the lochs to let their elephants rest, they were allowed to swim in the loch and only the trunk and two humps could be seen...

The article went on for a while..but it got me thinking. What about all those other sightings we read about. Or are those just clever marketing ploys by the local tourist board. Never mind, I will have to seek some other monster to hunt. Maybe that giant worm in the Gobi dessert...Although I am not that good with heat....

Either way, I am going on holiday and that is that!

Ilse