Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday has delivered this Author a most unsettling collection of dispatches - terror in the Capital, a fashion magnate's ruinous evening, and a fishy deception of the most literal variety. Whether your appetite is for scandal, justice, or merely a reliable piece of cod, today's column promises to leave you both informed and rather unsettled.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Thursday has arrived carrying rather more gravity than one might wish, though it has not entirely forsaken the absurd. A terrorist incident in the Capital, a King who apparently outmanoeuvred a president, and a mysterious statue that appeared overnight beside Florence Nightingale - this Author has questions, and she suspects you do too.

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.