SUPPOSE you were a friend of the queen of England just think about it, a real friend who liked her and wanted to celebrate her 70th birthday. The problem would not be finding her a gift. No matter how many worldly goods people have, I don't think it is difficult to find something friends would like, not if you know them well and know the kind of thing which would please them.
She might like a plant, for instance. I don't know anyone in the world who wouldn't like a Flame of the forest. Or maybe along handled shoe horn, or a funny water bowl for the corgis, or a kangaroo from Harrods, or a waterproof radio you can hang in the shower.
No, the gift would not be a problem. The problem, for a friend, would be trying to say something reassuring about her being 70 years old. When you arrive at the start of a decade, you like people to tell you how well you're doing and how great it has all been, something that would actually make sense of moving from the 60s into the 70s, and cheer her up - that would be the hard bit.
So let's try it.
You could say: "Your mother is still with you, hale and hearty. Not a lot of 70 year old women are able to say that."
You could say she herself has her health and energy - and that does seem to be true. She's able to stand through endless ceremonials, lay wreaths, listen to speeches, inspect guards of honour and talk to strangers to a degree that would flatten the rest of us.
You would say she's sort of a bob.
You could tell her she has such an interesting life meeting world leaders and an almost daily stream of accomplished people. You could say she has a fine art collection. And some very presentable horses.
But there would be a lot old areas where you wouldn't want to tread. If you were a friend of Queen Elizabeth's, the birthday would be a minefield. Presumably she doesn't have the nice, cheerful, loud friends like the rest of us, people who would come in and open a bottle of wine with you and say "Come on now, the annus wasn't as horribilis as you thought it was".
Her friends would be rather more reserved types from noble sorts of families, people she might have known since childhood, who had all been trained not to mention the most glaring problems but to be bland and courteous and say nothing which might offend.
These are the kind of people who, in the past, told her it was communists who led the hunt saboteurs, and nobody but servants reads the tittle tattle in the popular press.
But friends are friends, no matter how taciturn, and their solidarity will be of some support. And because she is not a fool she will know the constraints which exist.
THERE are gifts nobody will give her. Photo frames for pictures of happy family gatherings, for instance, would not be appropriate. Subscriptions to magazines and newspapers would eventually only add to the considerable grief, with the ever mounting piles of printed criticism of her family.
Nobody will organise a surprise party for her for fear of giving them all cardiac arrest.
But worst of all, not one friend can say the words most normal human beings must love to hear at 70, such as hasn't it been a fine life so far, a great marriage and didn't the children turn out well?
Who could say to Queen Elizabeth that it's all so much better now than in those frightening days during the war, and when Uncle Bertie had run off with "That Woman", leaving them to run the show?
When she thinks about it all she will realise, because she is not a fantasist, that in fact it didn't turn out very well. And the best she can say is that she did her duty.
Duty was always made out to be very, very important to her, particularly in the shadow of Uncle Bertie having paid scant attention to it. If Queen Elizabeth has regrets today they cannot be in that area. Nobody, not even the most rabid anti monarchist, could accuse her of having shirked doing what she thought was right.
But she may face a degree of painful reflection on whether she gave enough time to the other side of the coin: the emotional side.
Was she so blinkered by duty that she fell into being too formal, not visiting Charles at his school for example, not letting her sister marry a divorced man, not asking her children to refer to her as "my mother" rather than "the queen"?
In other circumstances she would surely have noticed the world was changing, upper lips were becoming softer, not stiffer.
If she hadn't been so dignified and aloof and hadn't tried to do her duty so obsessively, she would have seen that people everywhere, including the so called reserved British, were much more preoccupied with relationships. They would have warmed: much more to a monarchy seen to enjoy loving people and excusing them and being generous with them. But then, she thought it was the other way around, that people would admire a royal family with backbone and standards, and who didn't let the side down.
And this is where she ran adrift, because by the time the next generation had grown up, this whole duty bit seemed outmoded.
And to make things worse, they didn't have the affectionate, warm "love" bit to make them keep the rules in order to be nice to her, just as most of us do things to please our parents. Because in this case, their parents were rarely with them as mother and father. Now, she reads in the papers that when she was out sitting under a palm tree in some part of the Commonwealth in blazing sunshine, being fanned with big feathers while watching yet another interminable tribal display, she should have been having quality time with Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. And because she didn't, three of them had marriages which went up the spout and the fourth one is afraid of his life to walk past a jeweller's shop.
If Queen Elizabeth had fewer memories of orbs and sceptres and coronation oaths and succession acts and the duties of being defender of the faith and all of that to occupy her, she would perhaps have made a better job of all the complicated relationships family life involves.
This is not to say she could have done much with the extremely impatient, short tempered man she married. She seems to have fancied aim greatly when she was young, and at least he stayed with her and is there, grim faced and unhelpful, at her side through all she has to do. Whatever his indiscretions, by today's standards they were extremely discreet. Many a woman of her class reaches 70 and considers herself to have been well married if she has a husband like Phillip. The luxury of thinking about a happy marriage is not one every woman of her generation felt it was reasonable to hope for.
Then there are her children.
Everyone she knew sent children to boarding school; everyone told them to get on with it; to stop moaning about it and to put up with it, whatever "it" was. The other parents she would have known - dukes maybe, honourables, colonels - they didn't indulge children by asking them too much what they wanted: It was considered a bit American, the road to disaster.
She didn't realise until far too late just how estranged she was from them. And by the time she worked out what was wrong, the rest of us in the media had already figured it out for her.
She had grown up in a world where every country in the world - except England had written about Uncle Bertie's goings on. The British were too loyal to write about their royal family in anything except the most admiring tones.
Queen Elizabeth at 70 might be excused for wondering when it all changed and why. The answer always given is that they made a mistake in doing the first royal PR film, with them all grilling sausages on a barbecue. This let the public in and ordinary people became hungry for more information, a hunger which increased at an alarming speed, and feeding it led to long distance lenses and ladders on palace walls.
But surely that can't be right: if they had remained Victorian and aloof the tumbrels would have come for them by now. A changed, economically threatened, Euro panicked, multi racial Britain would not have accepted a royal family behind walls. They needed the public more than the public needed them. It became a game where the rules changed every day.
I imagine she must think her biggest mistake was not relating better to her daughters in law. If she had got on well with them, their marriages might have survived, but at any rate she would not be in the position of having to write them letters asking them all to get divorced nice and quickly for heaven's sake.
She wouldn't have to fear Diana setting up a rival "court of hearts"; she wouldn't have to pay Sarah Ferguson's debts or be considered a skinflint if she didn't.
Not even her closest friend could ever tell Queen Elizabeth she handled the business of in laws well.
They were all strangers and subjects and she was used to treating such people with a chilly politeness which she would not have thought of as rude. But she would have no idea of the expectations of young people already over awed by marrying into the first family, and how necessary it was to make an extra effort just because she was the monarch.
I WAS at the weddings of her three divorced children, so I actually saw how it worked. At Princess Anne's wedding, the Phillips family arrived with their invitations in their hands as if they might not be, allowed access to Westminster Abbey. The nod they got from the mother of the girl their son was marrying could have done nothing to reassure them - it was glacial to say the least. Now, you might say all this was in a church and people don't go around hugging each other and giving thumbs up signs, but there could have been something in between.
And even afterwards, when they came out, it was as if the Phillipses were just other members of the public. No nice matey conversation or reassurances that soon this phalanx of photographers would be gone.
They were poor on reassurances at Charles's wedding too. Diana's poor old father was hardly able to make it up through the church and there was no royal helping hand for him afterwards either. And there was the very cold refusal to invite marvellous, batty old Barbara Cartland, the bride's step grandmother, a dame who would have enjoyed it more than any human alive. There were no attempts to take Diana under a wing and tell her about how dreary it was living in a goldfish bowl. No reproving words to Charles about Camilla, although Queen Elizabeth must have known there was unfinished business there.
At Andrew's wedding, Queen Elizabeth looked tired. Now we're all tired from time to time, and there must be a million mothers whose sons marry someone they think too boisterous or whatever, but they usually put a face on it at the wedding, especially if half the world is looking on by television.
And if a son did decide to take a job in the Navy which meant him being away from home for six month stretches, most mothers in law would offer some kind of sympathy and say won't you come and have supper with us, or in the queen's case, join our royal box for this or that charity premiere.
But no. Nothing at all.
No welcome for Diana, whose husband was off with Camilla, or for Sarah, whose husband was off with the Jolly Tars. No sense of including either of them in the family.
And then Queen Elizabeth seemed distressed and surprised one of them had a food disorder and the other couldn't stop shopping. And she was appalled at the kind of friends they turned to when they were alone.
They may not have been ideal daughters in law, but most 70 year olds have made a better fist of mending fences and keeping things going for everyone's sake. It is strange a woman so trained in the art of keeping up appearances and doing the right thing fell down in this most essential of relationships.
I have known a thousand people who might have chosen different in laws, but have never known anyone refer to them as "The Enemy", as Queen Elizabeth's daughters in law have done.
SO suppose she does have a good friend or two or three to come around to see her and wish her well, people with whom she can feel relaxed and at ease - will they talk about what the rest of Britain is talking about? Such as:
How much longer can the monarchy survive?
Can Fergie's silence be bought?
Will Diana as a queen in exile make their lives a misery?
Will Edward marry? Should Edward marry?
Should Anne and the new, improved husband step in from the wings to be regents of some sort?
No, it's fairly clear none of these things will be mentioned at all, however much they may hang in the air at the palace.
Maybe if they did speak at all, her friends could tell her a number of reassuring things, like that the monarchy will most certainly last for her time; the people will turn out in huge numbers to see her and the applause will be genuine.
I used to wonder why whole districts of London where the unemployment is high and the living far from easy would want to see a queen doing a walkabout. But that mass devotion became clear to me in 1979, when the Pope came here and people who weren't very religious and had a lot less money than anyone in the Vatican flocked to see him.
She is a much admired woman. Unless you have lived in England you might not understand just how much her subjects admire her. And that's a term they are quite happy to use. "Subject". They don't think of it as bending knees or being subservient to anyone. They fear the monarchy less than a republic. They give you the stranger but deeply felt answer that at least with the royal family you know who you're getting with a president you'd never know who you'd get. Which is odd, since people actually vote for a president, but they tear having someone imposed on them.
And even people who think the monarchy has passed its sell by date still believe this small, earnest woman who has been tireless if not smiling in her official duties should be allowed to live out her reign with "dignity.
They may resent the huge expenditure on civil lists for young royals who are definitely not worth the investment, but they do not resent the present queen of their country being kept in style. Now she has begun to pay some taxes she could win their hearts' all over again by giving some of her huge fortune back to the people who are happy to be her subjects.
THE damage is done regarding her daughters in law. Perhaps she will find herself able to be more warm and welcoming to them now they are in exile, when she invites her grandchildren to Buckingham Palace. Perhaps she will be more open with their replacements when, despite Charles's extraordinary, rambling speeches to the contrary, he marries Camilla and when Andy finds another jovial funbird.
Seventy isn't old; her life is far from over.
She really did what she thought was best according to the very narrow traditions in which she was reared, and now everyone is having a bit of a swipe at her.
Most of the people I know think it would be more reasonable to have a republic in Britain, but then we all think our friends are representative, and look at the shocks we keep getting at elections.
And even among those I know who think it's outdated and holding everyone back, I know hardly anyone who wants to take the crown from Queen Elizabeth's head now. They think the system should die with her.
I hope someone tells her on her birthday that she didn't make a corgi's dinner of it personally. And that it was a really sad loss there was so much duty and so little love in her.