Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a Prime Minister with a curiously incomplete memory, a postal service haemorrhaging staff at a rate that would alarm even the most stoic of letter-writers, and a young man whose courage before the nation's cameras has achieved what polite petition could not. There is grief today too - of the most genuine and private kind - and This Author treats it accordingly. Steel yourself, adjust your lorgnette, and read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday brings bombers that have vanished into the Atlantic, a whistleblower whose story grows darker by the hour, and a fraudster whose downfall was his own inability to hide his Lego collection. This Author has seldom encountered a morning's intelligence so richly stocked with the grave, the scandalous, and the magnificently absurd - and she would not dream of keeping it from you a moment longer.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a record that nobody wished to see broken, a counter-terror operation at an airbase so significant it once stood ready for the American space shuttle, and a Prime Minister with a splendid vision he would rather not explain quite yet. There is also an eleven-year-old who is already making history while the rest of us are still making tea - and that, at least, is cause for genuine delight.