Ten years goes by so fast
There are certain events which enter popular mythology, almost help to define the structure of a lifetime or at least of one's memories. The older you are, the more of them you accumulate.
My first memories of "the news" date from well before I started school. I recall liking the name "Goldwater" and thinking "Kennedy" was a boring name, so I hoped ( Read more... )
I knew somebody who "ran in the same pack" as her in her teens - same clubs, parties etc. She told me it was clear from the age of about 15 that Diana was determined to have Charles, even to the extent of pushing her sister out of the way. It was all about being "Future Queen" for her, never about the man. I don't believe she ever saw it as anything other than a key to a fairytale lifestyle of non-stop glamour. So the in-laws were stodgy? Newsflash - so were mine.
The lake was probably to stop people desecrating her grave for holy relics - things reached the point of hysteria where they really might have done that - or at the least swamped the grave with notes, grafitti, teddybears and the rest. Have you ever visited the flame in Paris? It's a model of the flame from the torch of the Statue of Liberty - which France gave to the US, remember. It's right above the entrance to the tunnel where she died, and became a shrine to her - absolutely coated in maudlin grafitti, stuck all over with pictures, posters, stickers. I can well understand Spencer wanting to avoid that in his nice tidy stately home. (no, I don't have much time at all for him. I thought his speech hypocritical and disgraceful in the extreme.)
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