Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatches bring news of a pension policy that is making economists reach for the smelling salts, a royal school run that would test the mettle of any security detail, and a city that has decided the balaclava's moment of public glory is firmly at an end. Whether any of this constitutes progress is a question this Author leaves entirely to your discernment.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday has furnished This Author with a researcher who believes artificial intelligence may shortly kill us all, a political party that received more money in two days than every other party managed in an entire year, and a motorist in the Principality who drove half a mile down a coastal footpath and escaped through their own boot. Whether any of these developments ought to alarm or merely amuse you is, as always, a matter This Author shall leave entirely to your superior judgement.

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.