Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday delivers a reckoning of the most uncomfortable sort - institutions found wanting, laws that reward the wrong party, and a queue so long it has quite defeated a generation of young drivers. There is also a comedian weeping rather gloriously on a stage, and a naturalist turning one hundred with more grace than the entire apparatus of government. Your humble Author has read every word so that you need not face it unprepared.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings collision, conspiracy, and a bridge with a very low tolerance for warm weather - all before the weekend has properly begun. A train driver is dead near Bedford, a Prime Minister is telephoning his colleagues in something approaching desperation, and a crocodile enclosure in Cambridgeshire continues to demand answers. This Author has her lorgnette trained upon the whole extraordinary business and invites you to read every word.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings monarchs in triumph, comedians in chaos, and a fuel crisis that threatens to ground the British holiday-maker before she has so much as located her passport. This Author has also encountered, quite unexpectedly, a gentleman of eighty-four whose achievement puts every other soul in the Kingdom to considerable shame - hover close, for the details are not to be missed.