The season for dressing up is getting under way -and, oh, how we love being in our finery.

CINDERELLA has a lot to answer for. . . Ever since that Fairy Godmother scattered stardust from her wand and said "Yes, you shall go to the ball"- the rest of us have wanted to go too.

There is something about the chance to dress up that takes us out of our everyday world for a while. We all know, deep in our hearts, that actually we were meant for a grander life than the one we have. After all, a girl can dream, can't she?

And it's the Cinderella season. Students who spend the rest of the year dressing from Oxfam and living on beans and toast will forget the rent for the chance to wear a posh frock to a May ball, dance till dawn and pretend - for one night at least - that they are living the life of another more leisured and moneyed generation.

Huge stretch limos are manoeuvring down narrow roads and streets collecting gaggles of giggling girls and blushing boys, all dressed up to the nines for sixth form proms. OK it's an American custom, but why not? They look great, feel fabulous and it's a lot more glamorous than the sweaty discos we had to mark the end of school.

And worth it for the shock to any mother of seeing her scruffy lad all rigged out in a DJ with a passable resemblance to James Bond. Who'd have thought it, eh?

There is no logic to dressing up really. I mean, who decided that spiky heels, silk suits and elaborate hats are the proper dress for a muddy racecourse?

Mad, but fun.

Even the rich and famous, who presumably have more chances to dress up than the rest of us, are not immune.

Just look at the pictures of guests at the Beckhams' party.

Their dressing up box might be more expensive than those the rest of us have access to, but their glee was pretty much the same - and many of them were equally unrecognisable.

Dressing up is possibly pointless, but so what? Sometimes we all need to get in touch with our inner princess. After all, the clock will strike midnight soon enough - and then we'll all be changed back to pumpkins again.

OF course, David Cameron is right. We all need to find a good work/life balance, especially in the week when a new support group has been launched for workaholics, and the first Lottery winner, Ken Southwell of York, died, so young at 46years-old.

But saying that there is more to life than money possibly comes a little bit more easily to a privileged old Etonian whose parents have just sold a couple of paintings for over a million pounds, than it does to the rest of us wage slaves.

There is only more to life than money when you already have enough of it.

For most of us a decent work/life balance will have to wait - at least until we've paid the mortgage.

NEARLY 3,000 innocent people have lost the chance of jobs because the Criminal Records Office has labelled them, quite wrongly, as criminals in so many cases of mistaken identity.

A government spokesman says blithely that the figure represents only a very small percentage.

Maybe. But would you trust this lot to introduce ID cards properly?

LAST week I set off from Middleton Tyas, near Richmond, for Cardiff and the launch of the Welsh Woman of the Year (see Tuesday's paper).

At the crowded event in the amazing Millennium Centre, I finally found a table. Another woman joined me, looked at my name badge and said: "I used to live in The Northern Echo area, near Richmond" Oh yes.

"Well, outside really" Oh yes.

"A small village near Scotch Corner."

Don't tell me. . .

"Middleton Tyas."

I don't know how many people from Middleton Tyas were in Cardiff that day, but the chances of two of them meeting at the only spare table in the Millennium Centre, were I guess, pretty remote.

Then it turned out that the person I had gone to interview had lived in the same small Welsh town where I grew up. Her partner worked 50 yards from my house.

So if coincidences are ruling my life, how come they don't rule my lottery numbers?