Dearest Gentle Reader, this Tuesday has furnished This Author with enough material to last a fortnight - from veterinary surgeons who have, it seems, been charging what they pleased for rather too long, to postal workers with a most imaginative approach to the meaning of 'delivery'. And that is before we arrive at the matter of four charity ambulances reduced to smouldering ruin in the Capital in the small hours of Monday morning. Your column awaits.

Dearest Gentle Reader, This Author has today encountered a footpath of preposterous length, designer hounds behaving most abominably, and a certain former ambassador whose correspondence grows ever more fascinating by the hour. One would not wish to miss a single word of what follows.