Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers catastrophe, comedy, and a thunderstorm in equal measure - and This Author has opinions on all three. From a dancing-lantern platform that profits from peril, to the extraordinary discovery that one may now queue for the privilege of standing atop a Welsh mountain, the day has already exceeded its allotted absurdity. And the rain, when it comes, threatens to be precisely as cooperative as everything else in this Kingdom.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday delivers its sorrows with unusual weight - seven lives lost on a northern road in the small hours, and a nation that cannot quite find the right words. There are matters of mayors, energy bills, and Persian hackers besides, but it is the A66 near Middlesbrough that commands This Author's attention first, and demands that wit take a brief, respectful step aside.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Sussexes are homeward bound, the Chancellor's sums do not add up, and the French have taken to slashing dinghies with knives in the name of diplomacy - today's dispatches arrive with the velocity of a runaway carriage and considerably less dignity. This Author has grave intelligence on a top-secret acting role, a brotherly rift that proximity alone cannot mend, and a national day of silence that demands we set the lorgnette aside entirely. Prepare yourself.