Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a Palace rebuttal of such exquisite precision that this Author nearly applauded, a drug two years overdue that has arrived at last for a thousand women, and a stranger who read a plea on the digital salons and promptly donated a kidney - because why not. The day is grave, the day is warm, and the day is, in its way, rather remarkable.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday delivers quite the spectacle - a cancer target quietly collapsing, a mayor given the power to lighten your purse at every hotel check-in, and thirty bewildered souls confronting what they believed were migrants but were, in fact, a touring cricket team. This Author's toast grew cold long before the morning's dispatches were finished, and she suspects yours may too.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the word 'surprised' has never carried quite so much diplomatic freight as it does this Tuesday - and that is before This Author has even addressed the hosepipe bans that persist through the wettest week since February, or the thirteen-year-old who has today exchanged Berkshire for Berkshire, with considerably higher fees. The corridors of power, the emergency wards, and the royal household have all furnished this column with material enough to raise an eyebrow clean off one's face - do read on.