Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a celestial spectacle, a ballot paper the length of a dining table, and an economy that grows on sunshine and football - but stumbles on sewerage. This Author has much to impart, and very little of it will leave you feeling entirely reassured about the state of the nation.

Dearest Gentle Reader, one hundred and twenty millionaires have done something quite extraordinary this Thursday - and no, it does not involve a yacht. Meanwhile, the courts have been busy, Glasgow prepares to welcome the world, and a story of quite breathtaking courage and heartbreak concludes with a cat entirely indifferent to its own role in proceedings. This Author's lorgnette has rarely been so thoroughly exercised.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday delivers a leadership tremor supported by precisely ten souls, a military parachute drop onto the world's most remote island, and a political earthquake in the Principality that has left Labour speechless - quite literally. There is gravity here, and there is audacity, and this Author has spared neither her ink nor her eyebrow in the telling of it all.