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 prisons are full, a pastor is mourned, and a shadow minister has announced himself to the world a full two years before anyone is required to vote. This Sunday brings grief, political theatre, and a Channel crossing gone very badly wrong - and this Author has opinions on all of it.

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.