Dearest Gentle Reader, Monday has once again proved itself a day of peculiar contrasts - from a government agency that cannot count children correctly, to a machine that cannot identify an innocent man buying wine for a comedy evening. This Author has also a golden athletic triumph to report, and a drought so severe that sixty rainless days have passed in Surrey without so much as a drizzle. Read on, if you dare, for the full and rather remarkable picture.

Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatches bring wildfire, welfare upheaval, and a fraudster who managed to disrupt an entire athletics stadium - while Great Britain's sprinters quietly made history. This Author has opinions on all of it, and not one of them is what you might expect.