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.

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.