Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday has delivered warmth in places that least expected it - meteorological, emotional, and diplomatic - whilst serving a chill to those who perhaps deserved one. A duchess has returned, a chancellor has promised breathing space without specifying where one might sit, and fifteen creatures the size of pencil tips have, in this Author's considered view, outshone almost everyone else in the news. Do read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a Prime Minister with a curiously incomplete memory, a postal service haemorrhaging staff at a rate that would alarm even the most stoic of letter-writers, and a young man whose courage before the nation's cameras has achieved what polite petition could not. There is grief today too - of the most genuine and private kind - and This Author treats it accordingly. Steel yourself, adjust your lorgnette, and read on.