Dearest Gentle Reader, this day has furnished your devoted Author with a political resignation that may be the most theatrical since the invention of theatre, a £37 billion missile that will not be ready for several years, and news that the sea itself is running a fever. The octopus, it seems, is the only creature in these islands with a coherent strategy - and This Author has questions about Virgin Media that £28 million has not yet fully answered.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Southern Kingdom broils at thirty-seven degrees and the corridors of power run equally hot - a Chancellor faces demotion, a defence plan presses on without its Prime Minister, and a national inquiry at last names the towns where truth has too long been buried. This Author has much to report, and not all of it may be borne lightly.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a most extraordinary assortment of misfortunes - students dunned for loans they were encouraged to take, a shipping lane held to ransom by a most imperious neighbour, and a domestic situation involving two hundred and fifty dogs that this Author scarcely believes herself. The day's dispatches are, in equal measure, maddening, heartbreaking, and frankly unhinged - read on, if you dare.