DIDN’T she do well? The Queen I mean – off to Dublin in her green, 85 years old, dogged, gracious, tactful, speaking Irish, laughing with fishmongers, regretting the past, but not apologising.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

That’s what you get when you get a grown-up in charge. She wasn’t out to score points, just to try and make things a little better and the way she did it spoke overwhelmingly of wisdom – whether it was all her own idea or whether she chose to follow wise advice.

The first British royal visit for a century and an absolute triumph. Bet she enjoyed the horses too.

And, gosh, hasn’t it been quite a week for the royals? After they got back from Ireland, the Queen and the Duke had the Obamas to stay.

And again the Queen managed to look very queenly and relaxed and interested at the same time.

Though as I watched them negotiating all the intricacies of a royal banquet – all those speeches, all those fanfares – I couldn’t help wondering if they long for the day when the visitors have gone and they can just have soup and a sandwich with their feet up in front of Coronation Street...

Meanwhile, Prince Philip is storming towards his 90th birthday and in danger of becoming a national treasure and an absolute hero. Did you see that programme about him?

Couldn’t you see he was longing to tell Alan Tichmarsh just what he thought of him and his questions, but was on his very best behaviour so didn’t. Shame.

Then there’s William and Kate...

Michelle Obama has great fashion sense. She favours strong bright colours, unorthodox shapes and looks stunning.

But then she was completely and quietly upstaged by the Duchess of Cambridge in a £175 High Street dress that looked just absolutely right. Nice one, Kate.

And when we watched the incredible razzmatazz of the Obama motorcade and all his attendant security men, aides, doctors and that ridiculously huge car with its armour plating, you couldn’t help thinking of the nonchalant way the royals on state occasions go through London in open carriages, a sitting target for any looney with a gun.

Brave.

Then to cap it all, Princess Beatrice’s mad hat sold on eBay for £81,000. A bit of fun and some serious charity money too.

What a week. It’s enough to turn you into a royalist.

Wow!

A SCOTTISH schoolgirl has been allowed to listen to her iPod in exams as she claims it’s the only way she can concentrate.

What’s more, her school has had to pay for it, load the music on to it and give her a separate room to listen to it after they were threatened with legal action under the Equalities Act.

Wow. If we say we find it hard to concentrate without a bottle of wine, will employers be forced to stump up for a case of Merlot to get us through the working day?

The girl apparently often struggles to concentrate in school.

Maybe she should unplug herself from her iPod and try a bit harder.

‘We sat entranced as he sang...’

BOB Dylan is 70 this week. Nobody’s music can conjure up an age, an era, the smell, the feel of a particular time in the way that Dylan’s can. It’s the closest you’ll get to time travel.

The day before my A-levels started, I hitched over the mountains to see him in concert in Cardiff. Yes, the tour where he went electric and the audience booed “traitor!” at him.

The day before he’d been in Bristol and, the Severn Bridge not yet open, had travelled between the two on the old Aust ferry, not far from my sister’s house. There’s a great picture of him looking young and wild-haired and inscrutable in shades (Sun specs! On the Aust Ferry! Such sophistication!) The picture was used on the poster for the Martin Scorsese Film about Dylan, No Direction Home.

Wonderful to think of the great 20th Century musical hero pictured forever in the rain on that little quayside on the grey, muddy edge of Wales where we had spent so many hours queuing to cross in our Hillman Minx.

We didn’t boo Dylan. Instead, we sat entranced as he sang. With or without the band, it was the words that mattered, that pierced our souls and was the soundtrack of my life.

Well, Dylan’s 70 now and there aren’t so many of us who can remember him as a smooth-skinned boy with curly hair and a shy smile.

And Blowin’ in the Wind’s been used in a TV ad campaign. What would the 1966 protesters have to say about that?

The last tracks of his I own are on a Christmas CD that husband bought me with the best intentions last year. Dylan croaking along to Winter Wonderland, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

It is truly dreadful. Sounds just like your drunken uncle after he’s been staggering home from the pub on Christmas Eve. Actually, not even that good.

But it doesn’t matter. I’ll forgive him that. Because somewhere in the foggy ruins of time there’s an entire generation who might be getting their bus passes but who are still dancing ’neath a diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, waiting only for our boot heels to be wandering.

It’s about humanity

ELDERLY people in hospital are dying of thirst as nurses are routinely neglecting the most basic needs of the people in their care.

That’s nothing to do with training or even staffing levels.

That’s a lack of simple, basic humanity.

And if the people involved can’t even manage that, what on earth are they doing in nursing?

Such confidence

WHAT really impressed me about Michelle Obama – apart from her excellent, inspiring speech to the young state school girls she accompanied on a visit to Christ Church College, Oxford – was – did you notice? – when she arrived at Buckingham Palace for lunch with the Queen she wasn’t carrying a bag, not even a teeny weeny clutch.

Such confidence.

What, no lippy?

No tissue? No reading specs or photos of the kids? Not even a mobile phone to ring her mum from the royal loos.

Marmite

DENMARK, which I’ve always considered a fairly sensible country really, has banned Marmite. Does that mean we can ban their horrible tasteless bacon that shrinks to nothing and leaves you with a pan of wet white goo? Sounds like a fair swap.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
THE dictionary definition of slut is a slovenly woman, personally untidy, careless, dirty. Slut is a very overused word to describe any woman you might not wish to take round granny’s for tea, but does not fairly describe women who dress to impress no matter how much, how little, how provocative the style.

I believe it is in every woman to want to make the best of herself, in particular, for men to admire.

This has always been the case and like everything in life, will court some danger.

While the title – SlutWalk – the protesters have adopted for their walks will attract a good deal of attention, not all women who would support their aims are going to want to be associated with that title because of its connotations.

Chris Kirk, Brompton, Northallerton.