A Miss Rittelmeyer writes on the internet to complain that The Salisbury Review does not have an RSS feed.

Dear Miss Rittelmeyer,

    Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to explain the problems you had with the RSS feed for our 'Dawn's Early Light' blog. We are very sorry that this Salisbury Review product did not meet your expectations. We are not at all sure what an RSS feed is but suspect it has something to do with the accelerated pace of pseudo communication in the modern  world.

    At the Salisbury Review we have had a great deal of difficulty in coming to terms with so called ‘electronics’; (Leiden Jars, Faraday devices, Wimshurst machines and their offspring, the millions of small black boxes people talk incessantly to in public) and therefore have retained our fleet of fifty three homing pigeons.

    Unfortunately our pigeon caller Corporal Hopkins, ex Royal Corps of Signals, (mentioned in dispatches Gallipoli) is somewhat hard of hearing. When I attached my first communication to the leg of a Salisbury Review pigeon at my own base of operations in the wilds of Virginia, it arrived in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, however, Cpl Hopkins failed to notice the buzzer sounding in the pigeon coop and communicate the contents via his Marconi engine to the editorial floor immediately.

    We have learned recently that this problem has been ongoing for some time (our correspondent in Khartoum is still waiting to send the latest news of General Gordon – I am given to understand it is not good) and are taking steps to amend the situation.

   Therefore Cpl Hopkins has been to the local village pet shop and placed an order for RSS feed, an avian food, he assures me, that will greatly extend the range and speed of his birds.

Please accept our sincerest apologies.

May I be permitted to remain

Yours very sincerely

Matthew Walther

    PS: We have recommended Palmerston, the excellent, overworked specimen of Columbia livia to whom I referred earlier, to the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, who have decided to honour him with a Dickin Medal sometime in the next year. You are cordially invited to attend the ceremony at All Saints, Margaret Street, during which he, along with Haji, a bomb-sniffing Springer Spaniel, will be presented with this decoration. Please reserve 1 July in your calendar.