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?

Have name changed as this is quite outing - I worked near Kensington Gardens and so went up to see the flowers. There was an endless stream of people with flowers passing our office and I was interested in it as a moment in history, so popped up in my lunch hour.
As I was standing by the railings looking at the flowers (and some of the very odd messages as the pp said), the crowd suddenly surged behind me and pinned me to the railings, and I realised the PoW had arrived with William and Harry.
It was AWFUL. They looked pale and sort of frozen, but all these women (and it was women) were reaching out and stroking and touching them and crying as Prince Charles tried to show them the flowers and move them along the line at the same time. There was absolutely no thought about the feelings of bereaved children - the princes were just objects for them to vent their feelings on.
I’m not saying everyone who left flowers (and teddies, tea lights, poems etc etc) was like this, but it was a very ugly face of vicarious grief.

Not to get all TAAT, but since she raised the issue, better to actually read the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans threads than take Derxa's word for it. It was ok for her to make dozens of posts on them, but other people who did so and took a different view to her were ghouling, knitting at the guillotine etc.

Sometimes people are very critical and superior of those who grieve for strangers like this.

But I think it shows that we all carry more personal grief, and deal with more loss, than we are allowed to express in our day to day life, and these high profile deaths can act as a catalyst for catharsis.

I gave birth to DS1 that day!😀 Very early hours - then ex-dh went home for a few hours, and on his way back in to the hospital, the road went over the motorway, where the hearse was going up to Northampton. The bridge was packed with people and ex-dh was a bit annoyed because he was desperate to get to see his new baby son!

It was weird. Just the day before she died, the papers were full of articles slating Diana for her unsuitable relationship with Dodi, and running about the Med on Fayed's yacht all summer and then overnight it was as if that attitude had never existed and she was a modern saint.

I was a student at the time and me and my friends were not especially interested but I do remember going into the city we were studying in, seeing the pile of flowers and having a great urge to sign the tribute book, and having to remind myself that it was all a bit mad.

We all watched the funeral in our student house - thought Earl Spencer's speech was great - of course he's turned out to be a complete bastard himself.

My main memory is of her hearse driving along accumulating flowers on the windscreen as more and more people threw them at it, and us discussing 'what will they do when they get to the motorway?' The chauffeur stopped and dumped them unceremoniously on the verge and that was that.

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.

I wasn't grieving but the OP asked for experiences of people who went to London for her funeral. I live very close to the funeral route so I'm saying what it was like. You weren't here. Fair enough. If I didn't live here I might think the same.

But as you weren't in London, you can't comment on what an absolutely spellbinding atmosphere it was in the week between her death and the funeral.

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. She certainly wasn't a paragon. People enjoyed her antics- good and bad.
I suspect that people like me who were born closely at the same time as Diana felt we grew up with her. She died when she was at the height of her beauty and in such a brutal fashion.

No I found it weird

I found it weirder still that my mother spent days uncontrollably crying over a woman she never met and who wouldn't have given two shits for her, including throwing herself on the floor during the funeral, when when my DGrandfather had died two years before she barely noticed. All she was bothered by then was the bloody will and what she was getting.
I was working in a newsagent at the time and the amount of people coming in buying all the papers was ridiculous.

Here’s the Private Eye spread.

@alsohuman - it's on Netflix called something like Diana the weekthat shook the country

Ach, I don’t know @derxa I think she’s been cannonised a bit by some of the English public.

I did. Lived in London at the time so went to Kensington Palace with some pals and some cheap flowers, I think it felt like a moment in history. It was in the week leading up to the funeral. I do remember the tube platform was full of women holding flowers and very quiet - no one was talking. Same as when we got to the Palace, eerily quiet but at the same time no one was weeping and wailing.

I think the country was in shock, it was a very strange time. If you are too young to remember then it's hard to describe Diana's influence. She was literally everywhere, all the time. When people speak about what a hard time Meghan gets it was nothing compared to Diana. She was a divisive person and towards the end her behaviour was a little reckless. Imagine a time with no social media or rolling 24 hour news, no Kardashians or "influencers" . We literally just had daily newspapers and you would open them and they were full of Diana, every day. Then she was gone in an instant. Of course some people were affected by that. Also the media set the narrative in a way they simply can't anymore as you pick and choose your own news source now.

I had just bought a pair of purple velvet shoes (peak 90s) and sat watching the funeral on TV while wearing them. I thought she would approve.

I don’t think anyone is being ‘ice cold.’ You’re confusing two separate things. I think just about everyone would have felt a twinge of sadness to hear of the death of a fellow human being, a mother with dependent children, in a car accident. There are stories in the newspapers every week about that and they provoke the same reaction - sadness for the death and for the children who’ve lost their mother. The collective, public grieving is a totally different issue. Lots of people find it odd. That doesn’t mean that they lack humanity or compassion.

My main memory is of her hearse driving along accumulating flowers on the windscreen as more and more people threw them at it, and us discussing 'what will they do when they get to the motorway?' The chauffeur stopped and dumped them unceremoniously on the verge and that was that. Actually the flowers gathering on the windscreen was one of the most poignant images for me.

I had just bought a pair of purple velvet shoes (peak 90s) and sat watching the funeral on TV while wearing them. I thought she would approve.

I think there's also a 3rd category who haven't really been mentioned yet. People who weren't grieving as such, but got quite involved in the event and the circus it became.

My mum was like this. She wouldn't have one all the way to London to grieve, we were on benefits at the time and couldn't have afforded it, and I don't think she ever signed a condolence book, but she got very into all the coverage. She's a real 24 hour news lover now.

But although she felt very sad for the children, particularly as she had some of similar age, she wasn't experiencing any real grief response. Yet she was extremely absorbed in the TV coverage: we only had one, and there was an argument when she insisted on watching the hearse drive up to Norfolk for three hours after the funeral. I heard her talk about it with friends on the phone and I suspect she may have actually consumed more news on the issue then some of those who were mourning a lot.

I reckon there were probably quite a few people like this, who were very involved in and absorbed by the event without necessarily having particularly strong feelings beyond the usual sadness one would feel to hear that any children had lost a parent.

Ach, I don’t know @derxa I think she’s been cannonised a bit by some of the English public. I'm one of the most Scottish people I know.

I was in Northampton on the day of the funeral visiting my parents. We watched the funeral on telly then drive to fields close to Althorp to park up. Many people had the same plan and it was quite moving as we all slowly made our way in a snake like procession across the fields towards the gates. When the funeral car arrived everyone fell silent as it turned into the gates. I'm glad we went. It was like taking part in history. And yes, I cried a little.

Agree SlappingJoffrey. The media coverage was incredibly intense. Also, the public reaction and the media reaction kind of bounced back and forth off each other increasing each time. The public laid flowers so the media reported it and and pictured and interviewed the people laying flowers so people saw that and decided to join those laying flowers ...

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.

It wasn't the Mail on Sunday. Lord knows how Mumsnet loves to hate the Mail so sorry to burst your bubble. I read all the papers and it was in fact the Sunday Times with the hatchet job on that day and the piece was written by a man. They really went to town over four pages in the News Review section.

I read it on a beach on the last day of my holiday and agreed with every word while thinking: 'I bet their switchboard is in meltdown'.

Like I said, I didn't love her but some of the things she did were very valuable - notably about HIV/AIDs awareness. She also contributed to the gaiety of the nation for which I will always miss her.

I was totally uninterested in Diana's funeral, obviously felt sorry for the boys and was horrified how people expected them to be paraded before the public. But I can remember exactly where I was as we went to a friends surprise 40th birthday party that day. Where they lived was usually a 3 hour drive and we were supposed to be at the venie at a certain time to help get stuff ready. There was so little traffic we ended up with an hour to kill and there was nothing open so we were wandering around desperately trying to find somewhere to get a coffee.

IvanaPee..Why?

He died too.
And it was just down the road from where my DParents live.

God no.

We're in Scotland so no place closed or showed it on tv; the football was on instead.

No, I mean why lay flowers at all? Why drive to her funeral or want to?

I had just bought a pair of purple velvet shoes (peak 90s) and sat watching the funeral on TV while wearing them. I thought she would approve.

I get you dayswithaY, even if others are too obtuse to. She was fascinating and when she died we seriously wondered what we were going to splash on now.

At the time Bridget Jones's Diary was a column by Helen Fielding in the Independent - not a book or film with Renee Zellweger. I read it every week and it was so clever.

She knocked it out of the park that week with a column about Bridget dithering about what kind of tribute to lay at Kensington Palace for Diana. In the end she went for a copy of Vogue and a scratchcard - used and losing. It's what Di would have wanted.