Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday delivers quite the spectacle - a cancer target quietly collapsing, a mayor given the power to lighten your purse at every hotel check-in, and thirty bewildered souls confronting what they believed were migrants but were, in fact, a touring cricket team. This Author's toast grew cold long before the morning's dispatches were finished, and she suspects yours may too.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday brings two empty chairs in Manchester, a laundry room with ambitions of becoming a cell, and a First Minister of North Britain who has discovered the art of embracing change - though not quite yet. This Author has much to report, and very little of it is comfortable.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings dispatches of the gravest and most impudent variety - a convicted murderer who would appear to have found one final move upon the board, a Prime Minister who has relocated the entire machinery of government to Manchester, and a Principality quite literally visible from space. This Author's lorgnette has rarely been so thoroughly exercised.