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Dearest Gentle Reader,
What a week this has been. This Author has set down her lorgnette precisely twice since Sunday last, and on both occasions was compelled to retrieve it within the quarter-hour. The Kingdom, it would seem, has resolved to make a thorough spectacle of itself, and This Author is far too conscientious a chronicler to look away.
It began, as so many great entertainments do, with a change of administration. On Sunday, Five Prime Ministers, One Resigned Cobbler, and a Volcano on Fire announced our fifth prime minister, who had barely located the kettle in his new residence before, on Tuesday, A Golden Share, a Marmoset, and a Chancellor With Very Little Room to Manoeuvre revealed the knives already sharpened and the public purse already weeping. Speed, one supposes, is everything in politics.
Wednesday brought some relief in the form of youth and confectionery. Sugar Is Cheaper, Prisoners May Be Freer, and George Has a Suit offered cheaper chocolate, a hot microphone, and a thirteen-year-old prince whose tailor deserves a royal warrant. Thursday then delivered its own astonishment, as Taxed by Conscience, Freed by Statute, and Saved by a Cat recorded one hundred and twenty millionaires doing something entirely voluntary with their fortunes – and a cat too indifferent to appreciate its own heroism.
By Friday, the tone grew rather more Gothic. From Manchester to Broadmoor, With Rents, Red Flags, and Wildfire in Between gave us a principality visible from space and a murderer making one last move upon the board. Saturday, naturally, escalated further. Fire, Fertiliser, and a Law Student With a Most Unusual Bag brought simultaneous conflagrations and a travel companion no aspiring barrister could recommend. And then Sunday – always Sunday – closed the week with Trust, Sabres, and a Fourth Heatwave, in which the new prime minister declined to say whether he trusts a colonial president, the defence secretary soothed the nation about its sabres, and a party deputy’s donations attracted precisely the wrong sort of attention.
The pattern, Gentle Reader, is not difficult to discern. Britain has acquired a new government and the weather has grown hotter – and This Author cannot presently determine which is the greater source of discomfort. She shall, as ever, report faithfully on both.
Yours, with arch affection and a freshly inked quill,
This Author