Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author has encountered, in a single Tuesday's dispatches, butter where it ought not to be, sixteen million customers and a government on standby, a fire laid by foreign hands, and a television greeting that has confounded an entire corporate investigation. If you believed today might pass without incident - this Author invites you, most warmly, to reconsider.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings commandos fast-roping onto oil tankers in the Channel, a most sinister tale of so-called agents who reward their clients not with riches but with bruises, and - best of all - a Canadian lynx apparently taking the air in Carmarthenshire. One's lorgnette is wholly inadequate to the occasion.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday has delivered a first World Cup victory in thirty-six years, a last-minute medical ceasefire, and a miniature horse who travels by taxi to the dentist - and that is merely where the morning begins. Lord Starmer prepares an announcement that will send the technology companies of this age scrambling, while Belfast answers disorder with something rather more powerful than noise. This Author has her pen, her opinions, and very strong feelings about all of it.