Dearest Gentle Reader, a new prime minister has not yet crossed the threshold of the Prime Minister's Residence and already a £1.8 billion scheme has been quietly interred - while across the Atlantic, two rather more notorious brothers find themselves in custody with fifty-nine charges between them and a lawyer who insists the world knows them innocent. Add a man who changed from trainers to a tie somewhere between Manchester and the Capital, and a summer heatwave that refuses to consult its own calendar, and you will find this Sunday has proved itself quite incapable of restraint.

Dearest Gentle Reader, a removal van has been spotted outside the Prime Minister's Residence, a by-election has attracted thirty-four candidates including a gentleman named Count Binface, and the Meteorological Office has promised rain - possibly. This Author has surveyed this Saturday's intelligence and found it to contain enough ambition, absurdity, and genuine grief to fill a very full dispatch indeed.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Celestial Empire has registered its displeasure, a mayor has traded his civic empire for a rather larger one, and somewhere in the Kingdom a young woman has finally received justice for a most extraordinary campaign of impersonation. This Author has much to report, and Friday - baking, as it is, beneath a heat dome of truly theatrical proportions - has not disappointed.