Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a reckoning with the sky itself - two thousand seven hundred reasons to take the summer rather more seriously than the ton has been inclined to do. There is, besides, a scientific miracle accomplished in eight weeks, a murderous mystery in Devon with a man in Rotherham and a red car, and a seventeen-year-old who has entirely redefined what is meant by a handicap. This Author has much to report, and not all of it permits a smirk - though one or two stories certainly invite one.