REGULAR readers might remember talk around these parts of dinosaur museums and natural history societies a couple of weeks ago.

It got me thinking about our very own museum, right here in Torquay, and just for once I followed up thought with deed.

To my shame, the only times I have ventured inside have been for gatherings of other 'Secret Societies' who use the main hall for lectures and shows. What I had never done was carried on up the stairs to reach the first floor of the actual museum.

If I had I would have been greeted by the huge bearded head, and unbearded shoulders, of Charles Darwin, sitting on top of an oval table, wondering why it had taken me so long to get here.

When I finally make it past the Pengelly Hall doors and on to the first-floor landing I am still greeted by Charles, but this one is a lot more animated and minus the facial hair.

He also happens to be one of trustees of the museum, and vice-chairman of the Torquay Museum Society, which, incidentally, used to be called Torquay Natural History Society.

Charles has offered to show me round the museum before the members arrive for one of the society's twice-weekly lectures. But more of that later.

First comes the guided tour, which starts where we are, inside the Time Ark and Kent's Cavern room. Here, history is charted right from the Devonian era — which I had always assumed was when the dinosaurs ate cream teas and underachieved at sports, but was actually a period of the Paleozoic era from about 416 to 359.2 million years ago — to the modern day.

I am pleased to see there is a table given over to brass rubbing, with requisite pieces of coloured paper, fat crayons and embossed images of animals stuck around its edge. I remember brass rubbing from my first ever visit to a zoo and it's good to see the kids are still doing it.

But there are not too many nods to the past elsewhere (other than by all the contents of the entire museum you understand), and Charles explains why.

"Museums are really centres for learning now, rather than museums as you or I remember them," he says. "I like to think of it in terms of, for the past 10 years we have been opening boxes, and for the next 10 we will be getting things out of boxes. People don't just want to look at things behind glass anymore, children especially.

"For the special aliens exhibit last summer we had children bringing grandparents and parents in, whereas in the past it was the other way round.

"We were rushed off our feet for that, and a lot of locals came to it. Yes, we do rely a lot on the tourists, in many ways, but it's always nice to see so many local people."

The museum costs something like £300,000 a year to run, which it raises from such things as society subscriptions, a grant from the council, legacies, grants, gifts, special exhibitions. You get the idea.

It sounds to me like a constant battle to make ends meet, but it seems it was ever thus. The museum building was completed in 1876 after the Natural History Society had raised the £4,240 it cost to build, by which time the society itself had been meeting for 32 years. Its stated aim was the study of natural sciences, with an objective of purchasing books on the subject.

But even these somewhat modest ideals proved tricky, and so in 1851 having realised it could not flourish without the public's help and interest, the society made efforts to attract members of it by 'popular conversaziones' with music, exhibits and bazaars.

And that is much the same way in which they do it today, although they no longer use the term 'conversaziones', presumably because they don't want people to think they are Italian.

Nor are they small in number, with over 400 members, and 100 life members, this is one society which would contradict most accepted definitions of secrecy.

And yet I wonder how many people know it owned and ran the museum, with no little help from all those members.

"A typical member is ... there is no typical member," says Charles after deliberation. "It's one of the strengths of the society that there is so much variety among our membership."

We have moved upstairs at this point, amid the showcase 'Explorers' exhibit, with its mix of traditional things-behind-glass displays, and all sorts of interactive bits and bobs.

We move through into the Old Devon Farmhouse zone, an open display of kitchen, parlour and ablution apparatus from yesteryear.

"A lot of people in here recognise things they remember from when they were growing up," says Charles. "For something to go on display we think it should be related to this area, or collected within the local area."

Of course, what we see here is but a fraction of all the artefacts owned by the museum. They have plenty more stuff 'in the loft'. Something to which I can expressly relate.

"Literally there are boxfuls of stuff up there," says Charles, raising his eyebrows to the ceiling.

"We have been cataloguing it extensively for the past 10 years, but I wouldn't want to guess how much we have left to go."

If they ever finish, I've got six cardboard boxes of cassette tapes, circa 1990, which need going through.

We then move on to what Charles refers to as 'one of the most significant finds in the country'. Jaw bone KC4, excavated from Kent's Cavern by Arthur Ogilvy in 1927. "After the books, this is Torbay's biggest mystery," says Charles, paying homage to Dame Agatha and the room full of Christie artifacts we just wandered through.

Do you know, for the oldest piece of bone from modern man found in Britain it does look a little bit like a broken set of dentures. But, in keeping with modern expectations, there is a big blown-up version on the wall, and a slightly bigger representation in 3D next to it in the glass case.

Impromptu tour over, it's time for the lecture, which today is entitled 'Music and Flowers', and will be given by society members Jutta and David. It very much is what that sounds like, with Jutta presenting some of her favourite pieces of music with flowery themes while a series of flowery photographs by David play on the big screen at the front of the theatre.

And so we have Liszt's Chant des Fleurs, which I recognise from somewhere, the Flower Duet from Lakme, which was on the British Airways advert, something from Massenet ('Meditation' from Thais), Chopin, Strauss and Carl Zeller.

It turns out to be quite the most relaxing afternoon I have spent in a long time, and I'm not the only one if the number of nodding heads in the audience is anything to go by. Only the sound of rustling boiled sweet wrappers breaks the musical spell for a whole hour.

"What a beautiful afternoon," announces Rosemary loud enough to rouse some of those who have relaxed slightly too much.

As the hall empties, two of the last to leave are Martha and Peggy, both of whom have spent their fair share of time in here.

"I wanted to join the rambling section, but had to join the Natural History Society to do so," says Martha, with enough of her native Swiss accent to make me have to ask her if I had heard right.

It seems the Museum Society also does things outside, surrounded by natural history if you will.

"There is so much to see here," adds Peggy. "I used to go on the botany walks as well, but you don't ever get to walk very far because they keep stopping to look at things.

"I left the rambles because they walked too much, and the botany walks don't walk far enough for me."

At least both agree on the value of the lectures, and it seems like neither misses a single one if they can help it.

"Some of the subjects do tend to go over your head sometimes," says Martha. "But today's was lovely, and we always come anyway. It's one of the society's great strengths."

And the museum itself? "Sometimes I do go round on my own, if I'm early for a lecture," says Peggy. "They are always changing things around up there. There's always something to look at."

There is for Peggy at least. She has been deciphering Colonel Percy Fawcett's diaries 'upstairs'. "It's a long, hard process because his handwriting was so bad."

If it was, he is to be excused. You should know who Col. Fawcett is, but if not you may be about to be reminded by Brad Pitt. The Hollywood actor is either definitely or may be about to play Fawcett in a film about his mysterious disappearance in the Amazon on the trail of a lost city in 1925.

Fawcett was a genuine proper Indiana Jones type (irrespective of whether or not those films were based on him). And he was from Torquay. As the kids might say: "How cool is that?"

Well, it's very cool, and I am glad of the chance to look again at the Explorers exhibition when Rosemary, the society's vice-president, offers to show me round the museum. Twice in one day. A new record

"The remit when the society started was based on lectures and education of, what was then, contemporary science, the real cutting edge," says Rosemary as we pass Mr Darwin's stern gaze.

"These people were the educated classes, although not all of them had much money. It was written into the constitution that they couldn't have lectures about politics or religion because they are divisive subjects.

"And once they started expressing their views about religion and argued so long it made them late home for lunch."

There is a poster of Indiana Jones next to the Fawcett display, purely by accident I am sure, although I can't for the life of me see it as a negative connotation. I can think of worse characters to be compared to.

It doesn't actually look much, but when Rosemary points out one of Fawcett's diaries beneath the glass I can see what Peggy was talking about. The tiny script covering both pages on display from the small, leather notebook looks like a cross between hieroglyphics and a footballer's signature.

"Peggy is translating it so we can put it on computer," says Rosemary, "and more people can read it and enjoy it. We have to move with the times."

It's one of the hardest tricks for any museum to pull off. Making the past come alive and seem relevant to children thinking only of the future is not easy. In fact I think I'd rather chance my arm at South American jungle-based city discovery.

But I am sure those founding fathers would be happy that the current guardians of the future of history are thinking outside of all those dusty boxes.