EXCELLENT news that Prince William is off to be a pilot for the air ambulance in East Anglia.

Skilled, useful, professional – sounds a decent use of a young man’s time, talents and training.

Critics have said that it’s just a way to put off taking up royal duties – as if that were a full-time job.

He’ll still be working only four days on and four days off – which gives even a devoted family man a few spare hours to cut ribbons, make speeches and make people feel special.

He comes from a long-lived family, so a few more years in a relatively normal occupation sounds the best possible use of his time.

DRESS Code 1: Abby Ashcroft from Durham, eight months pregnant and celebrating a friend’s hen do, was barred from entering a Manchester night club because she was, sensibly, wearing flat shoes.

Apparently only heels fit the club’s dress code.

Really? Or was the club just annoyed that a sensible motherto- be was clearly going to spend the evening sipping orange juice and water instead of drunkenly divvying up ridiculous amounts for its over-priced cocktails?

DRESS Code 2: Pyjamas are the new fashionwear, according to Debenhams who are selling more of them in the hot weather.

Cameron Diaz and Carla Delevingne are among celebs who’ve turned up at top dos in their pjs.

Nothing new there. Last year Middlesbrough schools had to ban parents from turning up at school in pyjamas – even at going-home time.

Nice to think that Teesside’s ahead of the trend.

A BABY in a buggy is caught in a draught of wind blowing through an underground station and is blown onto the lines… The footage on YouTube shows mother doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even stop to think, but is down on the line in a split second, hauling the baby to safety seconds before a train came, while a couple of chaps don’t even notice what’s going on.

There are, of course, plenty of feckless, selfish mothers around, but I like to think that most of us would have reacted in exactly the same way.

There’s nothing so fierce as a mother’s instinct.

ONE in ten people has no close friends, according to a survey this week.

I suppose that’s sort of good news – in that it means that 90 per cent of us have someone to talk to, laugh with and listen and keep us relatively sane.

But it at all ties in with what we keep being told is an epidemic of loneliness, especially among the old. For a minority it must be grim – if you’re housebound with no family nearby and your old friends are also housebound, ill or have died.

Very difficult.

But for most people with more opportunities, friendship is a twoway business. We can’t sit there like lemons waited for it to be delivered by Amazon or Meals on Wheels.

Friendship takes a bit of effort.

Which is why those of us who are still capable of getting out and about and meeting people should get our friendships into decent repair while we can.

Otherwise there’s a long lonely time ahead.