Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a man who staged his own victory parade and then declined to attend it, a medical service that has only just discovered the 1980s were a poor epoch for data security, and a young woman who is quite determined to collect gold medals the way other people collect complaints. The pastures of Norfolk, the corridors of power, and the running tracks of Birmingham all demand your attention - and This Author, for once, is quite unable to decide where to point her lorgnette first.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a celestial spectacle, a ballot paper the length of a dining table, and an economy that grows on sunshine and football - but stumbles on sewerage. This Author has much to impart, and very little of it will leave you feeling entirely reassured about the state of the nation.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a catalogue of institutional failings so remarkable one scarcely knows whether to reach for the smelling salts or the petition paper. Two women lost, a politician's letterbox revisited, a famous marriage quietly dissolved - and, for those who prefer their scandals microscopic, a tale from a Cambridge hotel room that will quite put you off economy lodgings for life.