By E. Graydon Carter

Looking like a sitcom family returning from a vacation in the country, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Princess Anne and Diana, Princess of Wales, deplaned over the holidays at London's Heathrow Airport. The royal quartet, fresh from an outing in Scotland, grappled with a variety of hassles: driving wind, snowy tarmac, bulky luggage. And lots of dogs. There was Prince Charles' retriever Harvey, who couldn't wait to get off the plane. He bounded down the gangway, dragging Charles behind like a tin can. Then there was Anne's retriever. He took one look at the steep gangway and cowered in the plane's doorway. While a shirt-sleeved steward grabbed the dog, Princess Anne, with a stiff upper lip and fairly rigid upper arm, pulled on the dog's lead. The retriever lost. And Diana? Well, she just got a new cassette recorder and at times has seemed oblivious to the domestic turmoil around her. As the Queen reportedly has put it about Di's audio fixation: "She can't hear anyone."

"I'm not threatened by it," says Cher, 35, of her upcoming Broadway debut in a comedy, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. "An artist isn't intimidated. Once I couldn't sing. Now I can." In a formidable cast that includes Karen Black, 39 (Five Easy Pieces) and Sandy Dennis, 44 (The Four Seasons), Cher plays a garrulous cocktail waitress who is hired on as an extra in the 1956 James Dean-Liz Taylor movie, Giant, when it is filmed in her small Texas town. The play also marks the Broadway bow of Film Maker Robert Altman, 55 (M*A*S*H, Nashville), who anticipates no star-director skirmishes. "She won't be wearing her snakeskin suit," says Altman. "She'll be acting. And she's come into this on the same terms as everyone else--no limousines."

It was a prodigious year for the Los Angeles Dodgers' pitching prodigy Fernando Valenzuela, 21. In 1981 the chunky lefthander won a World Series victory; National League Rookie of the Year laurels; the Cy Young Award for the league's most outstanding pitcher; and to cap it all, the hand of Linda Margarita Burgos, an elementary schoolteacher from Merida, Mexico. Valenzuela, suited up in a black tuxedo, and Linda, dressed in a $3,000 gown, took their vows in the bride's home town. Valenzuela sneaked into the church by a back entrance to avoid a mob of well-wishers. Outside, many would-be guests were barred from the church by dozens of plainclothes policemen fearful that the crowd would charge the doors. The nuptials, presided over by two bishops and an archbishop, were broadcast nationally. Valenzuela, a cool customer on the mound, sweated the ceremony. After a Hawaiian honeymoon, the couple will spend the winter in Valenzuela's home town of Etchohuaquila, near where he plays off-season ball for his old club, the Mayos. As for Fernando's decision to settle down so soon, he sighed and said: 'I'm in love." A second reason: "In the United States it's hard living alone, not knowing the language and the way of life."

--By E. Graydon Carter

On the Record

Katharine Hepburn, 72, actress, panning promiscuity: "If we roll around with any old fool, we finally become cheap housing."

Doug Flynn, 30, weak-hitting Texas Rangers' second baseman and budding country and western music artist, commenting on his recent mastery of the guitar: "If I bat .220 again, I may have to learn how to play a few more instruments."

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