Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a Prime Minister with a curiously incomplete memory, a postal service haemorrhaging staff at a rate that would alarm even the most stoic of letter-writers, and a young man whose courage before the nation's cameras has achieved what polite petition could not. There is grief today too - of the most genuine and private kind - and This Author treats it accordingly. Steel yourself, adjust your lorgnette, and read on.

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, this Friday brings a foreign president threatening sanctions over islands in the South Atlantic, a British Army quietly told it cannot fire its own cannons for want of funds, and a villainous scheme that relieves desperate jobseekers of their savings whilst they sleep. If that were not sufficient to raise an eyebrow, there is also an eagle that refused to die - and five hundred golden retrievers who may yet restore your faith in this bewildering world.