It's the first text of the day.

Before I've even got my muff straight.

The muff is the technical term for the fluffy thing that sits atop my microphone.

And it is actually straight today.

Because I just straight to it.

Before I even got my muff straight, Dean has been in touch via text to say,

James, please, no more coronation discussions.

Please, please, please, please, please.

I don't know if this counts as a coronation discussion or not, Dean.

I think it probably does and doesn't at the same time, but we have to talk about the rather

dark shadow cast over the weekend's proceedings,

regardless of your feelings regarding royalty. We have to talk about this rather dark shadow

cast over the weekend's proceedings by some remarkably heavy-handed policing that unfolded

just a few hundred yards from where I'm sitting this morning with my straight

muff. I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I first stumbled across the Twitter post

describing the arrest of Graham Smith, who heads up the organisation Republican, Republic,

and some of his compadres. I've actually got his book in front of me. Someone must have left it in the office over the course of the weekend. It is called abolish the monarchy, why we should and how we will. So no one could ever accuse him of sitting on the fence. But what struck me most when I first started digging into

the reports and they were sort of, what's the word, eyewitness report. So they were unfolding

as it happened. There was a chap who didn't seem to have much journalistic experience actually,

but he did a cracking job. I think he may have been Dutch or Belgian and and he had a microphone with him, and they belong to a sort of transnational republican grouping. And he just

attempted to describe what was going on with a genuine air of wonder. I usually reserve

observations like this for mornings when plutonium goes missing in Iran or something like that, but

...