Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a mother's sacrifice in the Bahamas, a contract killer lurking in the corridors of the Conservative Party, and the Metropolitan Constabulary investigating its own conduct in the most tangled of royal affairs. If you had hoped the month might close quietly - this Author must advise you to abandon that hope at once.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings grief from the skies above Loch Lomond, a Chancellor pronouncing on runways from Bangkok of all places, a First Minister counting stars over Aberdeen, and a nurse whose definition of familial devotion runs to three-quarters of a million pounds and a campervan. Whether the nation's appetite for drama is quite equal to all of it - or whether, like the contestants of a certain castle-based entertainment, we shall simply yawn and be done with it - is a matter This Author leaves entirely to your discernment.