Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatches bring news of a pension policy that is making economists reach for the smelling salts, a royal school run that would test the mettle of any security detail, and a city that has decided the balaclava's moment of public glory is firmly at an end. Whether any of this constitutes progress is a question this Author leaves entirely to your discernment.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday delivers quite the spectacle - a cancer target quietly collapsing, a mayor given the power to lighten your purse at every hotel check-in, and thirty bewildered souls confronting what they believed were migrants but were, in fact, a touring cricket team. This Author's toast grew cold long before the morning's dispatches were finished, and she suspects yours may too.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the word 'surprised' has never carried quite so much diplomatic freight as it does this Tuesday - and that is before This Author has even addressed the hosepipe bans that persist through the wettest week since February, or the thirteen-year-old who has today exchanged Berkshire for Berkshire, with considerably higher fees. The corridors of power, the emergency wards, and the royal household have all furnished this column with material enough to raise an eyebrow clean off one's face - do read on.