Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a sorrow that silences even this Author's most practiced wit - and yet it brings also a convicted Mayor, a gilt crisis of twenty-eight years' standing, and women in the Principality compelled to the most extraordinary of disguises. The Kingdom's affairs have, once again, contrived to be simultaneously tragic and utterly, bewilderingly absurd.

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.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Wednesday has arrived with all the subtlety of a gas bill - and rather more electricity. Today's dispatch brings word of a Kingdom caught between soaring costs, a Prime Minister with ambitious seasonal plans, and a storm that appears to have been waiting two months for precisely the right dramatic moment. There are also fish. Extraordinary fish.