Dark Days Indeed. Fatwah Week 2

The strange media bandwagon rolls on, leaving Drumseet's second best poet crushed beneath its weight. The Standard unhappily perpetrated the lie invented by the hack who first unearthed this non-story, and repeats that Chapter 6 criticises my own pupils. This makes things very awkward, though in the main everyone I've spoken to has been good humoured and sympathetic. My pupils think I'm deranged anyway, so nothing surprises them. However, I have succumbed slightly to the vapours as a result of the stress and as a result may have to cancel my forthcoming world book tour.

Needless to say the notoriety has not translated into a flood of sales for Strange Bamboo. At last night's event in Moffat, the performers, technicians, administrators, outnumbered the audience roughly two to one. Only one book was sold and an old woman had to be virtually wrestled to the ground in order to achieve this.