Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has furnished This Author with enough material to last a fortnight - from veterinary surgeons who have, it seems, been charging what they pleased for rather too long, to postal workers with a most imaginative approach to the meaning of 'delivery'. And that is before we arrive at the matter of four charity ambulances reduced to smouldering ruin in the Capital in the small hours of Monday morning. Your column awaits.

Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author finds herself scarcely able to set down her pen, for this day has delivered no fewer than five dramas demanding attention, from a most emotional defeat in the halls of North Britain to a certain deputy sharpening her blade against her own party's leader. Add a contagion most alarming, a war of arithmetic abroad, and a countryside menace with four legs and no remorse, and you have a Wednesday that shall not soon be forgotten.