Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday has seen a prime minister lean towards old allies, a broadcaster reckon with a most inconvenient memory, and a beloved national institution bid farewell in a manner that may require your best handkerchief. This Author has also uncovered an extortion racket so brazen it makes the taxman look bashful - and it concerns the very portal through which you sold your last townhouse.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has furnished your devoted Author with a sacking, an ultimatum, a most consequential inquiry, a recycling catastrophe, and a mortgage rate that would make even the stoutest heart quiver. Who has been dismissed with the particular terseness of an institution hoping nobody asks further questions - and which great reform has been deposited, with ceremony, directly into the bin? All shall be revealed within.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a government that wishes to govern your toddler's viewing habits, a peer whose personal telephone is suddenly of the greatest public interest, and a woman who believed ziplining in Mexico was entirely compatible with being housebound. One barely knows where to direct one's eyebrow first.