Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings collision, conspiracy, and a bridge with a very low tolerance for warm weather - all before the weekend has properly begun. A train driver is dead near Bedford, a Prime Minister is telephoning his colleagues in something approaching desperation, and a crocodile enclosure in Cambridgeshire continues to demand answers. This Author has her lorgnette trained upon the whole extraordinary business and invites you to read every word.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a prime minister issuing warnings he can barely enforce, a Russian warship with a flair for the dramatic, and a television personality whose news silences even this Author's sharpest quill. The digital salons, the nation's grocery bill, and a retired couple with nerves of steel all demand your attention - and this Author, for once, is quite out of breath keeping up.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a transatlantic telephone call of splendid bluntness, a defence plan as absent as good sense in certain quarters, and a kebab scandal so audacious it deserves its own chapter in the annals of culinary deception. Plus - a royal wedding to restore one's faith in the possibility of a happy ending, if one can only get past the fraudulent mutton first.