Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has delivered a budget shortfall, a political backstab before breakfast, and - most remarkably - a marmoset discovered abandoned on a north-west London omnibus. The new prime minister has not yet had time to find the kettle in his new residence, and already the knives are sharpened and the public finances are looking distinctly fragile. This Author has opinions on all of it, and decorum shall restrain only the mildest of them.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author has encountered, in a single Tuesday's dispatches, butter where it ought not to be, sixteen million customers and a government on standby, a fire laid by foreign hands, and a television greeting that has confounded an entire corporate investigation. If you believed today might pass without incident - this Author invites you, most warmly, to reconsider.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings diplomatic collapse, five hundred arrests before the church bells have ceased ringing, and one very remarkable horse reminding us all what greatness looks like. This Author has barely had time to finish her third cup of tea before the world demanded comment, and she shall not disappoint.