Welcome to the real world, Elen

GOOD grief. It’s as if the last 50 years hadn’t happened...

Elen Rives, former partner of Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard is telling the world how bereft she is, since they split up. Well yes.

She probably is. Breaking up is hard to do.

He’s still in their incredibly expensive house. She’s in a flat with their two daughters. Lampard apparently misses his children. Elen misses Frank – and the lifestyle he gave her.

And that’s when the sympathy for Elen runs out.

“I’m old. I’m 34. I don’t know what I want to do now,” she said. “I don’t know how to move on. It’s so hard.”

Well, will someone slap her face with a wet kipper and say welcome to the real world.

The Fifties are over. We no longer pin our entire happiness and security onto a man. For most of us marriage – or a long-term liaison – is not a career move. These days women are meant to be independent, make their own way in the world. Even mothers have to keep their career skills sharpened, even if they put them on hold for a while. You never know what life can throw at you and the greatest freedom a woman can have is financial independence, the ability to earn enough to keep herself and her children, too, if need be.

Elen, meanwhile, has made being a WAG a full-time career, spectacularly so at the World Cup. She has not apparently pursued any other career since she has been with Lampard, just been a full-time mother and WAG.

Victoria Beckham manages to earn a crust or two, even though she seems very miserable while doing so.

Cheryl Tweedy is having a lovely time and earning tons of money, which gives her self-respect as well independence from husband Ashley Cole, should she ever want it.

But Elen stuck to being no more than an accessory in a man’s life. She was, as they used to say, a kept woman. Nice work but not much job security. And the trouble with a fulltime job – especially in these troubled days – is that it can end suddenly.

Especially one without a contract.

We all need to have a few more strings to our bow.

Well, one decent career option would be a start for Elen.

And what does she think she’s too old for – to get a job? Go to college?

Retrain as something interesting and rewarding? Get a life? Be independent?

No, she means she’s probably too old to bag another young, rich footballer.

Pretty sad – and a dreadfully feeble example to her own young daughters.

Even though she was never Mrs Lampard, she’ll probably get a decent enough pay-off. She might even work out what to do with the rest of her life.

Teaching her daughters to be independent would be a start.

SINCE the recession started apparently the number of billionaires has almost halved as the assets of the ridiculously rich have plummeted.

I know. Sad, isn’t it?

The Angel? Where’s that?

SO, have you seen the Angel of the North then? Probably not.

According to a new study, more than a third of North-East residents haven’t.

The research – for car makers Vauxhall, who might just have a vested interest in getting us out on the roads – showed that the British are very bad at exploring their own country. Most visit only 28 British towns and cities in their lifetime and many don’t even visit the major attractions right on their doorstep.

Of course, you’ve been to Durham Cathedral, York Minster, the Bowes Museum, Beamish, Bamburgh, uphill, down dales (lots of them), to the seaside and over the Millennium Bridge. No?

It’s strange how anxious we are to go abroad and yet so reluctant to appreciate our own gems.

But this apparently is the year of the stay-at-home holiday. No more chaos at the airport, delayed flights, crowded coaches and stripping off in security. Instead, we’ll be saving money and frayed tempers by holidaying at home.

We might even get to know our own back yard – and appreciate it.

We have let down our kids

NO actually, I’m not happy about the TV adverts for the morning-after pill. It’s another move that takes away a layer of responsibility, does away with the need for people to think through the consequences of their actions. Otherwise known as being a grown-up.

Contraception has never been so easily available. Young girls have never had so much instruction about the technicalities of using it.

But maybe they weren’t paying attention in those PSD lessons and thought the condom really went on the cucumber. Either way, the morning- after pill should be a last resort, not the first line of defence.

Although the advert was shown post-watershed, there was apparently a deluge of complaints from parents worried that their teenagers had seen it.

But we have let it get to this stage.

We have let down our children, our teenagers by not encouraging that sense of responsibility, of letting them get themselves into situations where they might need the morningafter pill.

We should concentrate on educating them on practical matters of contraception, not to mention the much messier matter of human emotions and relationships And until we do that, we have to accept ads for the morning-after pill as the least of a lot of evils.

The end of a legend

SHERBET fountain in a resealable tube? The end of a legend.

The whole point of a sherbet fountain was when the liquorice tube got soggy, you sucked so hard that in the end you either passed out from lack of breath, choked on the sherbet, got it in your eyes and up your nose – or it exploded all down the front of your nice dark school uniform.

But a nice safe resealable, controllable tube – where’s the fun in that?

The glam gang

CARLA Bruni... Michelle Obama... Princess Letizia of Spain... today’s first ladies are some of the most glamorous women in the world. They’ve sent the standard for political spouses soaring.

Meanwhile, I bet there are an awful lot of ordinary, dumpy wives of ambitious back-benchers now praying hard that their husband never actually makes it to be prime minister – so they never have to spend their entire days toning, tanning, buffing and beautifying in case they ever have to line up alongside all those glamourpusses.

Michael Caine

SIR Michael Caine is threatening to leave the country if the tax rate goes above 50 per cent. At 76, he says he’s still working, getting up at 6am “to keep 3.5 million layabouts on benefits”.

He might certainly have a grievance about the tax system..

On the other hand, he’s 76, he’s worth £45m. What’s he planning to spend it on? Is he going to give to his daughter – so she can lie around all day doing nothing?

How much money does one man need?

If he is still working it must be either because a) he loves working or b) because he’s greedy and wants even more.

Either way, it doesn’t give him the right to lump together with the idle and feckless all those people who would love to get up at 6am and earn a tiny fraction of what he earns, as long as they had a job, any job.

As such a great actor, the least he could do was pretend to understand.