Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday has served up masked men blockading a port in the name of protest, a community in Middlesbrough where distrust of authority runs deeper than any constabulary can easily fathom, and a foreign president rattling his sabre at 99.8 per cent of a very contented island population. Add to this a philosophical scandal in the corridors of the Reform Society, and a birthday serenade at a stadium that involved neither the birthday lady nor any effort on her part - and you will understand why This Author's pen has not rested all morning.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Monday has once again proved itself a day of peculiar contrasts - from a government agency that cannot count children correctly, to a machine that cannot identify an innocent man buying wine for a comedy evening. This Author has also a golden athletic triumph to report, and a drought so severe that sixty rainless days have passed in Surrey without so much as a drizzle. Read on, if you dare, for the full and rather remarkable picture.