The Week in the Ton – 8 June to 14 June

Dearest Gentle Reader,

What a fortnight this Author has endured. From Monday’s uncomfortable reckoning through Sunday’s triumphant dawn, this week has served up a most curious feast – one part national redemption, one part institutional failure, and several parts concerning behaviour from grown gentlemen who ought to know better.

The pattern, dear Reader, is unmistakable. When the System Fails and the Passata Melts set the doleful tone, followed swiftly by Shuttered Shops, Scattered Herons, and One Very Inconvenient Safeguarding Inquiry, which revealed that accountability has been hidden in plain sight for three years. Institutions, it would seem, prefer their scandals seasoned with delay. Yet whilst the state fumbles, When the State Calls a Victim an Offender, and a Schoolgirl Carries a Blade, our children languish, and Nearly 3,000 Patients a Day Cannot Get a Bed, Yet One Man Cannot Get Enough of Hugo Boss.

But then, dearest Reader, came the absurdity and the grace. Cuckoos, Nightcaps, and a Football Baron of Questionable Virtue gave way to Gruffalo Dames, a Stolen Boot, and a Nation Weeping Over Football, and finally, miraculously, Scotland Conquers the Small Hours, Doctors Stand Down, and Children Are Spared the Algorithm. A miniature horse in a taxi to the dentist, victory after thirty-six years, and protection for our young from the tyranny of algorithms.

This Author concludes that the Ton, like all of us, requires both accountability and joy in equal measure. We are given neither by chance.

Yours in dispatch,
This Author