Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author sat down to breakfast this morning and discovered that thirty thousand emails have been residing at the Palace for six years - and that is merely where today's extraordinary chronicle begins. There are triumphs of science, outrages of justice, and the singular indignity of being told to arrive at the airport three hours early and bring your own water. Raise your lorgnette and read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings dispatches of such varying weight that this Author's lorgnette has barely had a moment's rest - from a judicial decision that has left the entire Kingdom aghast, to a Cabinet minister's aircraft subjected to the most ungentlemanly interference from an easterly neighbour. And if that were not sufficient drama, a single passenger's carelessly packed luggage has managed to reroute an entire aeroplane to Rome. Today's column contains multitudes.

Dearest Gentle Reader, a Sunday this warm ought by rights to be peaceful - yet This Author's pen has not rested a moment, for the day brings a judge whose reasoning defies all decency, a border system that managed to grind half the Kingdom to a halt without even switching on its machines, and a spy who has arrived not in a cinema but in a gaming parlour, stripped of his licence and apparently his experience. Pull your fan close and read on - the shade, at least, is merciful.