I have become aware that there is a plot afoot to cause me embarrassment and bodily harm, and it emanates from Twillingsgate, U.K., where dark forces have conspired against me! Only the other day I was giving a reading to an awestruck assemblage of devoted fans in the small town of Brionne, France, near Rouen. French women, being highly romantic and passionate by nature are drawn to the earthy yet sensitive aspects of my poetry which completely transcends normal boundaries of art and ventures into areas of exquisite emotion and sensual depth which must be heard coming off the writer's lips alone...but I digress.

At any rate, there I was, with my faithful companion Angelique close by my side, holding a riding crop at the ready, as is her wont when I am in the presence of my more ardent female fans....and suddenly my kilt caught fire!

It was a horrifying situation. All the women began screaming as I desperately leaped about on the stage trying to extinguish the flames, but to no avail. Some sort of highly flammable liquid had been surreptitiously sprayed on the kilt, from behind the stage curtains I would assume, then ignited, and it was going up like a Christmas tree.

I was forced to rip the entire kilt off...what was left of it...and hurl the remnants into the audience, and that is not all. I regret to say that on milder days I go without underwear. In fact, I generally go without underwear...

I need hardly explain the sensation that this caused, for I am a Highland Scot.

It was a terrible scene, further complicated by a fight that arose among several women in the audience to claim the smouldering fragments of my ex-kilt, while others attempted to rush the stage, probably only to assist me in my hour of need, but Angelique beat them off with a rare fury. The fight quickly turned into a riot such as I have seldom seen in all my years of raising the sensibilities of the masses, and large numbers of gendarmes descended on the place like the legions of Tamerlane. I was arrested, carted off to a hideous jail cell, and am now falsely accused of having exposed myself indecently to a lunchtime audience, while the real miscreants responsible for this atrocity, this blatant attack on art, have slipped away like vipers into the shadows.

This is not what I call a Happy finish to the Old Year. The one bright note is that I was released this morning, due to the efforts of my indefatigable Angelique, who is as unstoppable as a bloodhound when she sets her mind to a problem.

I am again a free man! My voice shall not be silenced! My genius shall not be suppressed! My pen shall prove mightier than the sword! And the criminal miscreants in Twillingsgate shall live to rue the day they crossed Malcolm Buggeroll, the Poet of the Highlands!!!