To ask if any of you went to London for Princess Diana's funeral?

[ewenice]

Just watching a documentary about the week following Princess Diana's death and the overwhelming outpouring of grief that crossed the country. We were living overseas at the time so had no idea of the effect it had.

Did anyone on here go down to London during that week for the funeral or to sign the condolence books?

I didn't seem myself as too 'cool' to get emotional about it all.

I didn't feel any emotion, perhaps I'm just a hard bitch, I don't know. I also had rather a lot going on in my own life at the time.

Wasn't it Alastair Campbell who claimed the idea was cooked up at least in part to protect Charles?

Cooked up by whom? Didn’t Tony Blair play quite a big part in the funeral arrangements? Also Alastair Campbell would claim anything if he thought it would discredit Prince Charles.

I l ow where I was when she died - because our wardrobe fell over in the night and I put the radio on to try to get back to sleep.

I remember the funeral because I was sick in bed and a friend called me in tears because she had just found out that her baby wasn’t viable and she was going to have to have an abortion.

Someone upthread called it vicarious grief. That was it. So vulgar.
And there we have it. It was frightfully common. Something a dimwitted person would do.

I didn't, I did light a candle for Mother Teresa in our local church though.

...interesting psychological phenomena....

I think it's called a flashbulb moment, in psychology- such a significant moment that you remember even the most trivial details like where you were, what you were doing and the exact time of day/night

I don’t know that it was dim-witted but it was all about self-involved, weeping and gnashing of teeth about someone who had nothing to do with you.

Turning the whole thing into a circus.

Again; why??

ooh interesting, daisychain, im going to read up about that...

It was an eye opener to watch the huge numbers of people wailing and sobbing. Will be interesting to see what happens when the queen dies.

It won’t be the same. The queen’s death will be a sad occasion for the country, and I say that as a republican, and especially her family but it will not be an untimely tragedy in the way Diana’s death was.

Didn't go, it wouldn't have occurred to me, although we live in London, but I did watch it, and was appalled by the hysterical screaming of some people lining the route, who I imagine had never so much as met her.
Thank goodness it stopped fairly early on.

My dh was working long stretches in Indonesia at the time, based in Jakarta, and so many of the Indonesians he'd come to know very well - both male and female - watched it.
Whatever anyone might think now, it was the subject of worldwide interest.

It was a weird time and some people got carried away but I find the people insisting they were unmoved weirder.

It was an extraordinary event and claiming to be indifferent shows a strange perspective and incuriosity. Almost revelling in it. It was phenomenal.

And whatever you thought of Diana - I loved watching her every bonkers move - you cannot deny that many people felt a connection to her and she did important work - particularly in smashing the stigma around HIV/AIDS.

She hugged people who many people regarded as filthy carriers of the 'gay plague'.

A friend, who has since died of an AIDS-related illness, said he deeply admired her for that and he was not a sentimental man.

Mumsnet is so weird about Diana. Where were all these dissenters when the country was grieving? Absolutely nowhere. Virtually everyone was caught up in it. It’s very fashionable now to say you were stone cold unmoved by it all. In reality hardly anyone was at the time

This is a really bizarre and badly thought out way to look at it.

Sure, there were millions of people going to London to lay flowers, signing books etc. But there were nigh on 60 million people in the country at the time and it was extremely obvious even then that many more millions weren't doing it. Sure, some of them will still have been grieving furiously without having gone to sign their local condolence book, but plenty more won't have done it because they saw no reason to.

You're simply making assumptions based on what the people you know thought about it and did, and perhaps the media coverage too, since there wasn't really representation of those of us who weren't grieving weren't really represented during those couple of weeks. We weren't the story.

Mumsnet is so weird about Diana. Where were all these dissenters when the country was grieving? Absolutely nowhere. Virtually everyone was caught up in it. It’s very fashionable now to say you were stone cold unmoved by it all. In reality hardly anyone was at the time.

TinklyLittleLaugh, as I've already pointed out, nobody wanted to hear at the time from people who weren't prostrated with grief. The media relentlessly pushed the idea that 'everybody' was overcome and obsessed by what had happened. There was no room for any other narrative and it doesn't seem to have occurred to those who were upset that not everyone felt the same. Too busy conspicuously grieving, I suppose.

MN is odd about death altogether. One must never show emotion or display tributes of any kind. The same coldness is displayed on any thread about roadside shrines. Ditto the reaction to Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard. Cold as ice.

derxa, how odd. I've never seen anybody on MN display anything other than compassion and great sadness for Alfie Evans, Charlie Gard and lots of similar cases where someone has died, especially someone young, especially when it's been unexpected. It's not a sign of coldness to say that some people behave irrationally and mawkishly after another person dies and make the death all about them. Big crossover between this group and those who don't step up to help family when someone is dying or who do nothing practical to help bereaved families or other good causes.

thats lovely, limited.

(completely irrelevant, but if anyone is interested in a reminder of how things were for gay people and for people with aids, i recommend john boynes 'the hearts invisible furies- wonderful book)

I think that a lot of people were shocked at how quickly it happened etc but I don’t think that everyone was devastated and caught up in it at all.

I did watch the funeral on television because I was at home and we were going on holiday the next day. We went to America and one of the tv channels over there had the funeral playing on a loop for about three days. It was absolutely bizarre.

As for the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was absolutely bizarre, and I remember reading on here I think it was, a post from someone who said that just after she’d died this poster went on the underground, and there was a woman lying on the floor sobbing and wailing. Passengers had to step over her to get off the train.

When I came back from holiday I asked my colleague who had been on holiday for two weeks before me, so before Diana had even died, if she’d had a nice holiday, and she said “yeah, but it’s so so terrible what’s happened.” I thought she was referring to something which had happened to someone known to us as she didn’t name any names, so I asked her what had happened to which she responded “you know, Dianna!!!”

Helmet - sorry I slightly misstated, it's "Flashbulb Memory" theory.

Here's a summary of it - it tends to be a combination of high degree of surprise and emotion

www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2017/10/31/flashbulb-memory-theory-brown-and-kulik-1977/

Yes, limited, it was interesting, shocking, sad. But the level of grief displayed was ridiculous.

And yes, she did good but she publicly did bad, too. She wasn’t a paragon and it’s so odd that she’s lauded as one.

a post from someone who said that just after she’d died this poster went on the underground, and there was a woman lying on the floor sobbing and wailing. Passengers had to step over her to get off the train.

😂😂😂

The same coldness is displayed on any thread about roadside shrines. Ditto the reaction to Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard. Cold as ice.

I think you're confusing actual grief or bereavement with grief tourism, and the kind of dangerous nonsense that resulted in the underinformed, kneejerk lynchmob of Charlie's Army harassing medical staff trying to go about their jobs, and other parents trying to get into the hospital to see their own sick children.

I remember the hysteria over Diana's funeral very well, because I had just arrived to live in the UK for the first time as a postgraduate student, and thought I had landed on an alien planet full of people hysterically grieving over a privileged, rather dippy clothespony they had never met.

Just to add, on the night she died I had set the alarm for about 4.30 am, in order to go and pick a dd up from an early flight into Gatwick. The news came on with the radio - I was in a daze much of the way to the airport, and when I arrived - it was still very early - people were walking around equally dazed, asking whether it was true.

The early editions of the papers had of course missed it, and I still remember the journalist who'd written a really bitchy article about Diana in one of the papers - probably the Mail - how she must have felt! She apparently received an avalanche of hate mail, which I dare say served her right.

I had a 4 mth old and was up in the night so had watched from the beginning, starting from just reporting about the accident then a little later being told that she was dead. It still makes me fill up. I was visiting my family in Surrey and didn't want to leave/take a small baby to London, but some of my family did. I watched the funeral on the TV then went with my Mum to lay flowers on Dodi's grave.

I was in London for a party on that day and happened to pass nearby Buckingham Palace so went to see the flowers in the afternoon. It was breathtaking to see so many flowers. I was glad I got to see it. We were there recently and my children had never heard of princess Diana, I was very surprised and wonder how many young people would never have heard of her either. She's been somewhat erased from being mentioned in public recently, don't you think?

I wasn't in the country so no.

My family really isn't into the royals and I've never liked the cult of celebrity so really didn't get that involved.

It may be "fashionable to say that now" but that's the truth.

No I wouldn’t have gone. I remember that week leading up to the funeral feeling as if I wanted to avoid the news completely because it felt like the world had gone a bit mad.

And I felt sorry for the royal family, for the first time in my life, because this was their tragedy that they were forced to play out in a goldfish bowl.

Imagine if Facebook had been around then

It still makes me fill up. I was visiting my family in Surrey and didn't want to leave/take a small baby to London, but some of my family did. I watched the funeral on the TV then went with my Mum to lay flowers on Dodi's grave.

I’m curious. Why??