Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings democracy to the doorstep, a Princess bound for Italy, and thirty lorries operating under cover of darkness in the Essex countryside. This Author has questions about all three - and the answers are, as ever, more diverting than one might expect.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has arrived not with its customary dullness but bearing arson, alarming nursery advice, and a Prime Minister issuing stern warnings to a foreign power - all before a reasonable person might finish breakfast. This Author has much to record, none of it trivial, and one story in particular concerning the sleeping arrangements of infants that will make your hair stand quite on end.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday has delivered rather more than the customary post-bank-holiday tedium - there is a loan of breathtaking proportions, a medical miracle measured in minutes, and an act of heroism involving a shopping trolley that this Author considers the bravest thing she has encountered all year. There is also a royal announcement of the most welcome kind, and an explosion in Bristol that has so far declined to explain itself.