Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a transatlantic telephone call of splendid bluntness, a defence plan as absent as good sense in certain quarters, and a kebab scandal so audacious it deserves its own chapter in the annals of culinary deception. Plus - a royal wedding to restore one's faith in the possibility of a happy ending, if one can only get past the fraudulent mutton first.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday brings a reckoning of no small magnitude - a dying boy handcuffed by those sworn to protect him, a motorhome purchased on stolen funds, and ten red stripes on a cave wall that have waited seventeen thousand years for their moment of recognition. This Author has much to say, and not all of it is fit for the faint of heart.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings confessions of innocence from the highest reaches of North Britain, a recently resigned minister who appears to have forgotten his own government's budget, and a fungus that has declared war on a foreign invader with more success than most diplomatic efforts of recent memory. Your lorgnette will earn its keep today.