Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers catastrophe, comedy, and a thunderstorm in equal measure - and This Author has opinions on all three. From a dancing-lantern platform that profits from peril, to the extraordinary discovery that one may now queue for the privilege of standing atop a Welsh mountain, the day has already exceeded its allotted absurdity. And the rain, when it comes, threatens to be precisely as cooperative as everything else in this Kingdom.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this very Sunday has delivered a prime minister who will not say whether he trusts a certain colonial president, a defence secretary who insists nobody need fear a sabre - and a party deputy whose company's donations have attracted the most unwelcome sort of scrutiny. This Author has barely had time to cool her tea before the dispatches multiplied most alarmingly.