Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a donation so vast it has left This Author recounting zeroes, a parliamentary vote so close it hinges on sixteen souls, and a conservation effort so peculiar it involves a gooey mollusc and a garden greenhouse. The ton has been busy - and the masks, it seems, must come off.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a revenge served in black silk, a parliamentary vote that has reduced this Author to uncharacteristic solemnity, and a guilty plea twenty-eight years in the making - all of which together suggest that justice, like fashion, operates entirely on its own schedule. There is also the small matter of nineteen families in the West Midlands living from their car boots, which quite puts the ton's usual complaints into perspective. Your lorgnette is required.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a dispatch so richly stocked with folly, scandal, and civic catastrophe that this Author scarcely knows where to begin - save to say that the rivers are not safe, the energy companies are not sorry enough, and the leader of a political party has contrived not to vote in his own party's elections. Pour yourself something fortifying, and read on.