If you, like us at the Alternative Championship Headquarters (ACHQ), are prone to bouts of narcolepsy, to fits of pique, to lapses of memory and to sporadic bursts of anger, then you will be forgiven, as we hope you will forgive us, for missing the last three rounds of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship. If you, like us at the ACHQ, sometimes rely on the benefit of modern recording technology, or second-hand accounts from Max's ubiquitous "man-down-the-pub" to catch up on global politics, the world of patchwork-quilting and the latest results of Formula 1, then you too will be forgiven, as we hope you will forgive us, for mistakenly assuming that only one Grand Prix had been run since our unfortunate bout of narcolepsy rendered us more useless than usual.

Pitpass Editorial note - include for publication: "More useless than usual"? That seems a tad hard to fathom - Ed

Our fall from Grace (apologies to Grace for having climbed on top of her in the first place) started in the week leading up to the European Grand Prix. Having completed the mountain of work expected of two lazy and ineffective layabouts, we naturally celebrated by adjourning to our local, the Plumbers Arms, in search of amber and ample refreshment. What followed is hazy at best and a complete fog at worst, suffice to say that some four weeks later we are still feeling the side-effects of a night of ill-judged, poorly executed and at times, downright criminal, revelry.

None of this is excusable. However, should you, our dear and loyal readers, find it within yourselves to forgive us for our recent absence, then we would be eternally grateful (as we would be to Grace should she choose to have the restraining order removed).

Before we continue, we feel a brief rundown of the events (as we remember them) leading up the decline and fall of the ACHQ Empire is necessary;