Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers a quartet of dispatches grave enough to give one pause and one glittering discovery to restore the faith. Four thousand souls face uncertain futures at a most celebrated carriage house, a beloved news presenter reveals a battle fought in dignified silence - and a Victorian lady who talked her way into a museum with no qualifications whatsoever has finally received the recognition she deserved some one hundred years ago. This Author has opinions on all of it, naturally.

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.