Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings economic prophecies dark enough to make one's teacup tremble, shadow ships lurking in the Channel, and a corporate resignation that speaks volumes - mostly in the language of shoes. This Author has studied the day's dispatches with great care, and she invites you to draw rather closer, for the news is not fit to shout across a ballroom.

Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author's Monday tea sits untouched, for today brings word of telephone diplomacies between two most powerful lords over a waterway that may yet determine the price of your supper, a desperate plea from a prison cell in a war zone, and the revelation that a simple family luncheon now costs more than a gentleman's wager at cards. All this, and a quarrel about moles that has set the nation quite ablaze.

Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author can scarcely credit that a Sunday should bring word of Persian missiles, the scandalous inflation of cucumbers, and fabricated ladies of the digital salons all in one breath. Someone, somewhere, has a great deal of explaining to do, and This Author intends to savour every morsel.