UFOs are rather out of fashion.

A pity, since Scotland had its own epicentre of sightings. Here Hugh McMillan offers an amusing account of alien activity in the Central Belt. The poem first appeared in Aphrodite's Anorak (Peterloo Poets, 1995) and can also be found in The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (EUP, 2005)

THE X FILES: Bonnybridge, October '95

Lorrayne

before you hit me with that object

shaped like a toblerone

let me explain.

We only went for a half pint and a whisky

then set off home but somehow

lost two hours on a thirty minute journey.

My mind's a blank

but Brian clearly saw

Aliens with black eyes and no lips

leading us onto a kind of craft.

I tried to lash out, explain that I was late,

but they used some kind of numbing ray on me:

it put me in this state.

Lorrayne, don't you see what it explains?

All the times I crawled home with odd abrasions.

Put that down Lorrayne,

don't you see I have to go again,

for the sake of future generations.