Fairytale to lift depression

The Irish Times Maeve Binchy supplelemnt carries many gems.

Her report on the Prince Charles and Diana wedding in July 1981 is funny but maybe it's a lot more than funny.

Did Binchy mean to convey the idea that it was all a fake - she uses the word 'fairytale'?

In the last paragraph referring to the wedding day, she writes: "And the best bit of the fairytale is today".

Did she know something that the rest of us did not know back then?

And then how cleverly she tells the reader Diana was no good at school but her Dad had loads of money - so much that he could buy her a £100,000 flat in London. And that long before Paddy was hopping around the world with his spare cash buying up property in all the smart places.

So behind her smile, maybe Maeve Binchy saw it all as a whiff of cloud dust. Everything.