Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday brings a dispatch so rich in catastrophe and contradiction that this Author barely knows which alarm to sound first - the wildfires, the hidden explorer, or the warship sent cheerfully to the ocean floor. There is sewage aplenty, a late-September heatwave that would embarrass July, and a mystery worthy of the finest Gothic novel. Read on, if you dare.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a trio of contradictions so delicious that This Author scarcely knows where to begin - a government that begs grocers for mercy, loosens the very sanctions it swore to tighten, and finds a certain royal duchess once again in the orbit of a man making very free with palace connections. Pull up a chair; the kettle need not be on long.