Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday opens with tragedy in a Devon field, a pharmaceutical miracle twenty years in the making, and a controversy about lapel badges that threatens to consume more energy than the policies they symbolise. This Author has also noted a new arrival to the ton - unnamed, genderless, and already more mysterious than half the Cabinet.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a helicopter in a Devon field, a puffin seeking elevation of an entirely different sort, and the alarming intelligence that three-quarters of the Kingdom's workers face their dotage on a budget that permits dinner out precisely once a month. This Author has opinions on all of it - and several on the common frog.