Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a donation so vast it has left This Author recounting zeroes, a parliamentary vote so close it hinges on sixteen souls, and a conservation effort so peculiar it involves a gooey mollusc and a garden greenhouse. The ton has been busy - and the masks, it seems, must come off.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday delivers a masked stand-off at the port, a politician who was emphatically not listening to a conversation about half a million pounds, and a railway terminus full of passengers going precisely nowhere - all while the thermometer climbs to midsummer heights in the first week of September. One hardly knows whether to reach for a fan or a lawyer.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday has served up masked men blockading a port in the name of protest, a community in Middlesbrough where distrust of authority runs deeper than any constabulary can easily fathom, and a foreign president rattling his sabre at 99.8 per cent of a very contented island population. Add to this a philosophical scandal in the corridors of the Reform Society, and a birthday serenade at a stadium that involved neither the birthday lady nor any effort on her part - and you will understand why This Author's pen has not rested all morning.