Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author's Monday tea sits untouched, for today brings word of telephone diplomacies between two most powerful lords over a waterway that may yet determine the price of your supper, a desperate plea from a prison cell in a war zone, and the revelation that a simple family luncheon now costs more than a gentleman's wager at cards. All this, and a quarrel about moles that has set the nation quite ablaze.

Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author finds herself besieged on all sides this day by whispers of missiles gone astray, a vanished Duchess whom all of America wishes to question under oath, and a governing party that cannot seem to agree upon a single thing whilst the world burns around it. Add to this celestial fireworks and a contagion in Kent, and one begins to wonder whether Saturday itself has taken leave of its senses.

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.