Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatches span forty years of an unresolved mystery, a fourth heatwave that the Kingdom has received with all the surprise of a punctual train, and a television sofa vacated with considerably more grace than this Author had anticipated. Whether it is the heat, the headlines, or the curious vacancy left by a seventeen-year fixture, Tuesday has once again proved itself incapable of dullness - read on, if you dare.