Dearest Gentle Reader, a removal van has been spotted outside the Prime Minister's Residence, a by-election has attracted thirty-four candidates including a gentleman named Count Binface, and the Meteorological Office has promised rain - possibly. This Author has surveyed this Saturday's intelligence and found it to contain enough ambition, absurdity, and genuine grief to fill a very full dispatch indeed.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Celestial Empire has registered its displeasure, a mayor has traded his civic empire for a rather larger one, and somewhere in the Kingdom a young woman has finally received justice for a most extraordinary campaign of impersonation. This Author has much to report, and Friday - baking, as it is, beneath a heat dome of truly theatrical proportions - has not disappointed.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Thursday has delivered, in the space of a single afternoon, a footballing collapse of historic proportions, a political farewell conducted with surprising dignity, and a digital platform that apparently cannot tell a child from an adult. This Author has opinions on all three - and they are not, she warns you, entirely restrained.