Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a donation so vast it has left This Author recounting zeroes, a parliamentary vote so close it hinges on sixteen souls, and a conservation effort so peculiar it involves a gooey mollusc and a garden greenhouse. The ton has been busy - and the masks, it seems, must come off.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers a quartet of dispatches grave enough to give one pause and one glittering discovery to restore the faith. Four thousand souls face uncertain futures at a most celebrated carriage house, a beloved news presenter reveals a battle fought in dignified silence - and a Victorian lady who talked her way into a museum with no qualifications whatsoever has finally received the recognition she deserved some one hundred years ago. This Author has opinions on all of it, naturally.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a foreign president threatening sanctions over islands in the South Atlantic, a British Army quietly told it cannot fire its own cannons for want of funds, and a villainous scheme that relieves desperate jobseekers of their savings whilst they sleep. If that were not sufficient to raise an eyebrow, there is also an eagle that refused to die - and five hundred golden retrievers who may yet restore your faith in this bewildering world.