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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author has observed a great many weeks in the life of this Kingdom, but the one just concluded deserves particular study, for it has exhibited a singular gift: the ability to pile misfortune upon absurdity upon misfortune, and then, with magnificent timing, add a duchess.
It began, as so many catastrophes do, on a Monday – a government that cannot count its children, a machine that cannot recognise an innocent man, and Surrey, baking in sixty rainless days with the stoic resignation of a wallflower at her fourth consecutive unsuccessful Season. By Tuesday, Muscovy was issuing veiled threats and someone had filled a warehouse with impounded dinghies, which is not, This Author feels, how warehouses ought to be used. Wednesday brought a gas bill, a storm of theatrical proportions, and – extraordinarily – fish.
The Sussexes, meanwhile, became the great recurring motif of the week, threatening their return on Thursday and then again on Friday, like a rumour that gains fresh confidence with each repetition. The Chancellor’s arithmetic, This Author notes, remained no more convincing at the second reading. Saturday offered a man rescued from the sea who rewarded three hundred and twenty-nine souls with inconvenience – gratitude, it seems, has its limits.
And then came Sunday, and the A66, and seven lives extinguished in the small hours, and This Author set the lorgnette down entirely. Some weeks end with a punchline. This one ends with silence, and silence shall have it.
Yours, with rather more feeling than usual,
This Author