Hullo, Justin here,

                                  

Like everyone else in the country, we here at the Palace are trying very hard to keep warm. Why, I myself am wearing long combinations issued years ago to a small group of clerics of which I was a member, which visited the Inuit people well inside the Arctic Circle, to try to persuade them to stop clubbing seals, killing whales and being generally beastly to anything with a pulse. I am also sporting hand knitted half-mittens. My lady wife has produced quite a few of these winter warmers for Palace staff.

                                

Our problem is an elderly central heating system which appears to have given up the ghost. Despite the often expert attentions of Mr Hassan, it simply will not work and we appear presently to be overrun with heating engineers from “Warm’n’Kozy” who keep switching everything off – including the electricity (hence the brevity of this missive) and shouting down hot – air grills, “Anything up your end?”

                               

But before there is another interruption to the power supply, I must just offer a word of support to our Prime Minister, the doughty Mrs May. Recent media reports have made much of her apparently holding hands with President Trump. In fact, my lady wife thought that this was a sure sign of a “special relationship”. I begged to differ. I noted that it was Mr Trump who reached for HER hand, and not vice versa. At that point and under the gaze or the world’s press, Mrs May could hardly have snatched her hand away whilst growling, “Get off! I’ve heard of men like you!” Which, I like to think, is what Jesus might have done .I must go. Two hefty chaps in high-visibility jackets bearing tool-boxes have just arrived at my door.

Pip, pip,

Justin