Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday has furnished This Author with a 15-metre inflatable vessel, a 70-metre medieval tapestry, and a television presenter airlifted from a Devon clifftop - and that is before one has even considered the 658 employers who apparently mislaid several million pounds of their workers' wages behind the sofa cushions. Today's column contains revelations that will astonish, amuse, and perhaps persuade you never to set foot on a muddy coastal path again.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Sussexes are coming home - and this is not a drill. Also returning, with rather less fanfare, is British summer, which has apparently remembered it owes us a thunderstorm or forty. If you thought today might pass quietly, This Author has a Titanic ride in Hertfordshire that begs to differ.

Dearest Gentle Reader, one hundred and twenty millionaires have done something quite extraordinary this Thursday - and no, it does not involve a yacht. Meanwhile, the courts have been busy, Glasgow prepares to welcome the world, and a story of quite breathtaking courage and heartbreak concludes with a cat entirely indifferent to its own role in proceedings. This Author's lorgnette has rarely been so thoroughly exercised.