Ponds must resist the tide of change

Published on Wednesday 12 July 2006 12:06

THE Venetian Renaissance-style entrance hall of the Royal Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street has to be among the most spectacular interiors of our city.

As a child I can recall my breath being taken away by the light and scale of it; the upper tiers and galleries tapering horizontally like some wonderfully delicate three-dimensional cake-stand.

And there on the marble floor in front of me, two large rectangular fish ponds. For over 30 years of visiting the museum, these have been my first port of call. Absurd though it might seem, their aquatic occupants - the varieties of carp and goldfish, the dace, the golden orfe and the North American catfish - have become old friends.

I cannot be sure the ones I am looking at now are the children or grandchildren of the ones I saw in the past, but I like to think of some of them as second or third generation. A sort of fishy Royal Museum dynasty.

I would also like to be able to claim I can recognise them individually, but that would be an exaggeration. However, I am sure some of the keepers do, and speak to them regularly with affection.

Furthermore, I applaud the way in which the museum has over the years taken in waifs and strays - sad unwanted cyprinus auratus abandoned by their owners.

For example, there are two large chubby orphans swimming above the tribute coins on the pool bottom today who owe their survival to the museum's charity. I do wish somebody would launch a "Goldfish is not for Christmas" campaign. I also used to worry about those coins, but have been reassured they pose no health risk.

The fish of the Royal Museum live in an idyllic environment, obviously not their homeland of temperate Asia, but a place where their water temperature and its quality are regulated to specifically accommodate them. Not only that, but they are given medical attention.

Normally I dislike seeing living things kept in cages, but I was surprised to read that Jem Fraser, director of the Museum's refurbishment project, has described the ponds as too shallow. In comparison to the ubiquitous diminutive tanks full of tropical exotics to be found in almost every Edinburgh medical centre, they are the next best thing to the blue lagoon. And if she really feels strongly about it, why not suggest the ponds be made deeper?

However, I do to some extent agree with her that they get in the way of corporate functions, which nowadays, for better or worse, are the financial life-blood of every public building. Twenty years ago I helped organise one such social event for 800 guests at the museum and the fish were removed in case some mindless individual dropped alcohol (and in those days, cigarette ends) into the water. To some extent, therefore, I should take a share of the blame. In subsequent years, the ponds have been regularly covered over for a succession of fashion extravaganzas and award ceremonies.

And of necessity, as it turns out. Of the nine large catfish to be seen in recent years, only three survive thanks to the carelessness of the visiting public, which brings me to the conclusion that the removal of the fish ponds from the main concourse of the Royal Museum is probably inevitable.

Museums in this age of cyberspace, virtual reality, and holograms cannot afford to stand still. The spectacular 27.9 million refurbishment of the Kelvingrove Museum Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow proves the point. The eight-year old Museum of Scotland, adjoining the Royal Museum, is a triumph. Now it is the turn of its older and more delicate Victorian partner to have a 46m facelift with a new reception area, interactive exhibitions, a 150-seat self-service restaurant, escalators, and a glass lift to the upper storeys.

We are told that 200 stuffed animals are to be introduced to replace many of the current ones. Surely, therefore, amid all this change, some sensitive allowance could be made for the museum's long-term living residents? In a palace in which the majority of the exhibits are dead, the lethargic, but very alive presence of a few of mankind's earliest ancestors can only be seen as reassuring.

So let me plead that if the ponds ultimately cannot remain, another strategically situated water feature be created instead. On either side of the glass lifts, under the hanging whales, or surrounding the millennium clock, perhaps?

The Royal Museum claims its exhibits cover "life, the universe and beyond," which puts me in mind of the English poet Rupert Brooke's polemic Heaven: "Fish say, they have their Streams and Pond; But is there anything Beyond?" Let us hope for their sake, and ours, that there is.

• Roddy Martine is an Edinburgh author and social commentator