Dearest Gentle Reader, this very Sunday has delivered a prime minister who will not say whether he trusts a certain colonial president, a defence secretary who insists nobody need fear a sabre - and a party deputy whose company's donations have attracted the most unwelcome sort of scrutiny. This Author has barely had time to cool her tea before the dispatches multiplied most alarmingly.

Dearest Gentle Reader, a removal van has been spotted outside the Prime Minister's Residence, a by-election has attracted thirty-four candidates including a gentleman named Count Binface, and the Meteorological Office has promised rain - possibly. This Author has surveyed this Saturday's intelligence and found it to contain enough ambition, absurdity, and genuine grief to fill a very full dispatch indeed.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a government curfew that teenagers may instantly dismantle, a British couple in a Persian gaol whose ordeal grows more shocking by the hour, and a Kingdom so thoroughly baked by the sun that even the scandals feel warm to the touch. This Author has opinions on all of it - some arch, some grave, and at least one barely fit for polite society.