Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings word of a generation falsely maligned, of survivors still confronting their abusers in the bread aisle, and of justice that arrives - when it arrives at all - rather tardily. This Author also has urgent intelligence from Cumbria, where a man who practises his ugliest face for four hours daily has at last claimed the prize he deserves - and where a television actor discovered, perhaps unexpectedly, that celebrity counts for very little when your jaw muscles are insufficiently loosened.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this day brings dispatches from the Himalayan heights, the operating theatres of tomorrow, and the Cotswolds - where a certain Duke and Duchess have rather quietly made themselves at home. There is also a blood-red moon expected before dawn on Friday, which This Author considers either a portent or a coincidence, and declines to say which.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a celestial spectacle, a ballot paper the length of a dining table, and an economy that grows on sunshine and football - but stumbles on sewerage. This Author has much to impart, and very little of it will leave you feeling entirely reassured about the state of the nation.