Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday opens with tragedy in a Devon field, a pharmaceutical miracle twenty years in the making, and a controversy about lapel badges that threatens to consume more energy than the policies they symbolise. This Author has also noted a new arrival to the ton - unnamed, genderless, and already more mysterious than half the Cabinet.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday the Grand Assembly returns from recess bearing documents of extraordinary volume, a court has declared common sense the winner of a £100 million dispute, and a personal trainer has been awarded a small fortune for the crime of an empty chair. There is, besides all this, a whiteboard in Nottingham that this Author cannot shake from her thoughts - and which every person of conscience ought to know about.

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.