Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a monarch baring his tax bill to the nation, a government minister telling his superior to 'stay classy' from the digital salons, and forty hospital staff whose curiosity has proved rather more dangerous than their patient's reptilian assailant. This Author's lorgnette has been working quite the overtime - read on, if you dare.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Southern Kingdom broils at thirty-seven degrees and the corridors of power run equally hot - a Chancellor faces demotion, a defence plan presses on without its Prime Minister, and a national inquiry at last names the towns where truth has too long been buried. This Author has much to report, and not all of it may be borne lightly.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a transatlantic telephone call of splendid bluntness, a defence plan as absent as good sense in certain quarters, and a kebab scandal so audacious it deserves its own chapter in the annals of culinary deception. Plus - a royal wedding to restore one's faith in the possibility of a happy ending, if one can only get past the fraudulent mutton first.