Dearest Gentle Reader, the Bayeux Tapestry has come home after nine centuries abroad - and it is not the only thing returning to these shores under somewhat fraught circumstances this Friday. A duchess un-appears from an itinerary, a political party finds its finances the subject of constabulary interest, and someone is attempting to sell you a fan for seventy pounds. Your devoted observer has been taking notes.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this day has furnished your devoted Author with a political resignation that may be the most theatrical since the invention of theatre, a £37 billion missile that will not be ready for several years, and news that the sea itself is running a fever. The octopus, it seems, is the only creature in these islands with a coherent strategy - and This Author has questions about Virgin Media that £28 million has not yet fully answered.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a palace squabble over a bed nobody shall be sleeping in, a pizza alibi that has now been formally investigated and found entirely lacking in evidence, and a patriot of the people whose personal arrangements turn out to be rather more generously funded than he saw fit to mention. All this, and a moment of genuine grace besides - but you shall have to read on to discover which story earns it.