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Dearest Gentle Reader,
A week in the Ton is rarely dull. A week such as this one, however, borders upon the theatrical. This Author has surveyed seven days of dispatches and found running through them a single, irresistible thread: that those entrusted with the greatest responsibilities – royal, political, financial, and medical alike – are, to a one, improvising rather more desperately than they would wish the public to observe.
It began, as chaos so often does, on a Monday. Boots Under the Floorboards, Chips Off the Menu, and a Derby Decided by a Boot of Quite Another Kind set the tone with admirable efficiency – treasure, cake legislation, and a whist drive ticket of venerable age. By Tuesday, School Runs, Triple Locks, and the Eternal Question of Who Is Paying for Whom had economists reaching for their smelling salts and security details reaching for something considerably stronger.
Wednesday delivered a cinema birth and a village attempting secession, as recounted in Petrol, Parish Revolts, and a Baby Born During Harry Potter – a sentence that captures the national mood with uncomfortable accuracy. Thursday offered rare warmth, a stranger surrendering a kidney to another stranger, and a Palace rebuttal of surgical precision, all catalogued in Recollections May Vary, Reservoirs Certainly Do, and Someone Has Given Away a Kidney.
Then the week darkened considerably. Spies Who Lie, Surgeons Who Err, and a King Who Allegedly Celebrated Too Soon produced confessions from the Secret Intelligence Service and a palace dispute warm enough to heat an entire Season. Saturday brought a billionaire whose patriotism expires at the Monaco border, as detailed in Recollections May Vary, and a Billionaire May Vary His Address. And Sunday, never content to be outdone, furnished stranded fridge-freezers – yes, you read correctly – alongside royal parallels and a lethal drug supply, in From Carriages to Aeroplanes, and Other Desperate Pivots.
The pattern, Gentle Reader, is plain. Recollections vary. Addresses vary. Competence, it seems, varies most of all. This Author remains, as ever, watchful.