Those 'what were you doing the day that....' days.

[curiouswombat]

I was just reading gillo's post which started with those days you remember all your life, and was going to post a comment, realised it would be enormous if I got started, and decided to make my own post.

I have no idea what I was doing when President Kennedy died - although I vaguely remember seeing pictures in the paper. I have no idea what I was doing when Elvis died, and it didn't bother me much. I do remember the day the first men walked on the moon - the headmaster at school spoke of it in assembly, and I can remember seeing very shadowy pictures on TV.

I realised that many of the 'I remember what I was doing' days are related to Royal events....



Like Gill I remember the Prince of Wales investiture - but only because the Queen wore a very odd hat!

Again, like Gill, I was at university in the seventies, and we didn't have TVs - but like her I remember Princess Anne's wedding - at least I remember sitting in the Junior Common Room of my Hall watching it - I liked her dress!

I remember the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, too. I was a staff nurse in a female orthopaedic trauma ward - lots of women, many of them quite elderly, confined to their beds. We had only 3 TVs on the ward, all old black and white ones(honestly!), and the Prof persuaded a local TV supplier to provide colour ones, for the publicity.

We had a great day, all the essential work was done by mid-morning, and we got out the wine and the nibbles for everyone, and settled in to watch the wedding. It was a brilliant day, because of the company and the comments. The most memorable thing? The way everyone said 'Oh my God! What on Earth is she wearing? The dress is all crumpled. She looks a right mess. That dress looks like a dog's dinner!' For me the other memorable thing was Dame Kiri Tekanawa singing.

I saw the dress in real life the next year - it went on tour, along with lots of the wedding presents, and I went to see if it really was how I remembered - and yes, it really was an overdecorated crumpled heap.

Funnily enough my next 'I remember' day is Prince Andrew's wedding - I was a ward sister now, and again staff and patients, this time mostly male, all gathered together to watch. My main memory of it is that the Duchess of York had a beautiful wedding dress. I had only been married a couple of months myself, and I envied her that dress!

Gill mentioned the attack on the World Trade Centre - I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard about that - I was teaching a group of qualified nurses about continence related aids and appliances! When we finished, the first person we met outside the classroom door said 'There's been a terrible plane crash in New York!' By the time I got home from work my daughter was sitting glued to the TV coverage in shocked fascination, and we both sat there unable to take our eyes off the screen for a long time.

Which brings me to Dead Di Day, of which this is the tenth anniversary. It was a Sunday. D-d (Daughter-dear, as opposed to Dead-Di) was first awake, as usual, and had gone downstairs and put on the TV. She came up and woke S2C and I up to tell us that there was no proper TV on, it was all about the Princess of Wales - she thought she must have died or something.

Unlikely as this seemed, I came down, and after a few minutes realised she was right. 'How sad for her sons' I thought, 'Still, being killed in a car-crash with some man seems the way she would have wanted to go, wonder when the proper TV programmes are starting?'

The minister prayed for her sons in the morning service, along with the families of anyone known to us who had died. I went home, to discover that all normal TV coverage of sport etc. had disappeared, and my nine year old was extremely pissed off about it.

By four in the afternoon, after we had been out and come back in to discover that normal programmes had still not been resumed, D-d christened it Dead Di Day and so it has stuck in our family, with the centre-piece usually refered to as Dead Di.

And as the week went on, and all there was in the papers and on the TV and on the radio was about what a wonderful person she had been, and how a whole nation was heartbroken, I kept thinking 'But this is the same woman that you were showing pictures of in a bikini on a yacht last week, and describing all her many affairs in detail. When did she become everyone's beloved plaster-saint?'

Mother Theresa, someone who really was important, died in the same week - she got a 10 second footnote at the end of a half hour news programme all about how the nation demanded that the Queen be more upset - WTF?

How upset would you be if your son's ex-wife, who had been most famous for the number of men she had slept with during and after the marriage, was killed in a car crash with her latest man? The Queen wanted to keep her grieving grandsons at Balmoral, or Sandringham or wherever, and the public wanted to see their every tear, and preferably the Queen weeping buckets too - again I thought WTF?

I remember admiring Prince Phillip, an old man in his late 70s even then, and Prince Charles walking with the two boys in the funeral cortege - to support the boys, not because they had any real need to be there in their own right as the ex-husband and ex-father-in-law of the deceased. Would you expect to attend the funeral of any of your ex-in-laws? Except to dance on their graves? And yet the press wanted them to be heartbroken.

Elton John at the funeral service was totally maudlin - but at least he was honestly upset, as she had been a friend. Lord Spencer made a political speech from the pulpit, and you felt he was already working out just how much he could make out of his late sister and her sons. Interesting to read somewhere that he has seen very little of his nephews since they became old enough to decide for themselves who they spend time with.

The whole hysteria of the week/month passed me by - I really don't understand why there was so much fuss about her.

Now that it is the tenth anniversary of her death, I admire her sons, who she obviously did dote on, and who loved her just as much - for them to organise a memorial was so right. I think their mother would be proud of the way their father and grandparents have brought them up. And the Bishop was quite right to ask that people stop exploiting her name (I wonder if he was looking at her brother at that point - I would have been.)

And again I wonder at the TV reporters talking about 'The people who all revere the Princess' - as we have become a more secular society it seems we have to now set up false God(desses) and worship them instead.

Mind you - there was one good thing that came out of that week - we decided we would have to get satellite TV.....


ETA - my daughter has just pointed out to me that I also have a very clear memory of what I was doing the day they reported on the explosion at Chernobyl...

Comments

[gillo]

Funny. I half expected flames because my post was insufficiently respectful towards the Dear Sainted Dead Di. Instead I had a chorus of agreement!

That dress was dire, wasn't it? I couldn't work out why they couldn't have afforded to iron the thing. I remembered Princess Anne (odd, we were less than twenty miles apart that day) saying she didn't want "yards of child bridesmaids". Di did. Fergie's dress was much better, I agree.

We have held out against satellite to this day. It's easier now, with Freeview and DVD and downloads, but we had some squabbles with the girls for not providing wall-to-wall MTV and Nickleodeon.

I approved of the Bishop's pointed words. We watched the news report, not the whole thing, but I was very struck by how very much William resembles his father and, for that matter, George V (imagine him in a beard. Just like the last Tsar too). And how much Harry - doesn't.

[desdemonaspace]

I like how honest you are. Di has been canonized by the press for her charities since her death (the same press who hounded her), but I have to say I rather admire her for her work lobbying against land mines, too. I don't have her on a pedestal, though. (As for her wedding, I couldn't be arsed to get up in the middle of the night to watch it) and saw none of the other royal events.

I do remember Kennedy's assassination--the news was announced over our grade school intercom, and we were sent home shortly--but I was young enough to be a complete idiot about it, whispering and giggling with another callow chum. At home, my parents were riveted to the TV, along with the rest of the neighborhood. Over the next few years, Bobby Kennedy's and MLK's assassinations fell like clods on a filling grave, as Viet Nam on the six o'clock news for years sort of numbed me to death and made me feel my entire country was going to hell in a handbasket.

9/11 is the biggie. I was at work and a coworker (who started later than me) came on and said a plane had hit the WTC. I said, "What a terrible accident," and got on cnn.com. It barely loaded, as the site was so bombarded with people trying to get the latest news. My company evacuated our east coast locations in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, and some bigwig had me find a tech guy to scare up up a couple of TVs. We all spent the rest of the morning watching the towers come down. I called Frank and Uncle K, and told them to turn on their TVs. Just writing this gives me a weird sense of unreality--makes me think of the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

Diana--Still Dead!

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

I found Diana mildly interesting, because she and I are within a couple of weeks of each other in age. I remember the wedding vividly--I was working as an unpaid intern at a TV station, and I helped someone review all the footage to put together a piece for the afternoon news. I couldn't imagine getting married at nineteen, especially in such an astonishing blaze of publicity. I also thought her dress was gawdawful--she looked like she was drowning in day-old meringue!

I think she and Charles both went into that marriage for very bad reasons--she wanted the glamour of being a royal and ultimately Queen of England, and he needed appropriately virginal breeding stock. And since they were totally incompatible, it fell apart all too predictably, with the press emphatically Not Helping. She was shallow and poorly educated and rather spoiled, and she kept trying to find something that would give her life some meaning or purpose. She might have found it, if she had lived--she was starting to figure out how to use her fame and glamour for larger purposes. But she was also desperate for love and attention, and the media was always more interested in her sex life than anything else about her, so maybe not.

The weekend she died was Labor Day weekend, here in the U.S. For me it was personally disturbing because Labor Day weekend and death seemed to be linked...my mother's husband had died over that weekend a year earlier, and one of my dearest friends had died the same weekend in '94. It was depressing, and I felt extremely sorry for her sons, and oddly bothered that someone my own age was dead already. Plus I was pregnant, and in that state where a good Kodak commercial could have me bursting into tears.

I think the fact that she still gets so much media attention and speculation about her life and death, ten years after her burial, creepy in the extreme. We're getting into Elvis territory here.

[rincaro.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, I remember the day she died as well. I'm not sure why, as I was never particularly invested in her or anything royal. But I was driving in a car on the way to a Renaissance Festival with a good friend.

The only other I remember is 9/11. I worked in a newspaper at the time and of course there are TV's running news all the time everywhere. But that day was different. Every TV with the same surreal scene. And no one spoke. Everyone just stared.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

I've always found that dying somehow makes a person a better human being for some reason, people really don't wish to say something ill about the deceased. And for whatever reason, celebrities really get painted with a big brush. Amusing enough I was reading about Anne Boleyn earlier today and although she was called "The Great Whore" in her lifetime as soon as the sword lifted off her head ballads began to circulate about how she was a "sweet wronged woman". I guess some things never change.

And count me in with the "why is everyone so gagga about Princess Di" Club. I could never understand why her face was constantly plastered all over American magazines during her lifetime, you'd think we had enough of our own celebrities to put on covers. And, of course, how her sons are frequently mentioned although not to the extent of their Mom.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

William is beginning to look more like his father's family, isn't he? Although he still has a look of the Spencers about him.

I have come to the conclusion that Harry probably is kosher - he sometimes has a distinct look of Prince Philip about him. But it is probably more by good luck that he is like Prince Philip rather than Will Carling, or whoever.... He has his mother's taste in leisure activities though - definitely a party boy!

Kat pointed out that he is a much better public speaker then William, both in the clips of the service shown on the news and in the bits of the Dead Di Concert she saw where William was reading notes off his hand!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I also admired her for her work with the land-mine trust. She had dropped most of her other charities by the time she died, and was only patron of six even though people talk about all her charity commitments.

I remember seeing film of the death of Bobby Kennedy on TV - but not in an 'I remember that day' way.

I think that the ones which will stay with me, for such very different reasons, are Dead Di Day and 9/11.

[gillo]

It's funny how both of them have their mother's accent. Harry is probably the right side of the blanket, but he certainly looks more Spencer than WindsorMountbatten Saxe Coburg Gotha Schleswig Sonderburg Glucksburg, which may well be an asset to him in life. He seems to have something of his mother's flair for publicity, while I think William may well have been scarred by his hatred of the press and Meeja which he blamed for her death - he's just enough older to have been much more aware of such things.

Re: Diana--Still Dead!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I think you are quite right about why they married, then she discovered that the glamour and the adulation from afar was not enough, hence the long parade of men.

she was starting to figure out how to use her fame and glamour for larger purposes

I like to think that you are right - but she had actually given up most of her charitable work in the year before her death, and as the boys were becoming more independant and spending time with their father (as most children of broken homes tend to)she seemed to have more and more time for being a socialite.

The UK papers did not make a big fuss about her sex-life when she was alive - I think they actually tended to play it down, as they liked to see her as 'the wronged wife' (did you get those pictures of her sitting wanly outside the taj Mahal?).

I gather from something I have read since that Will Carling's wife wanted to name her as correspondant in their divorce for what the newspapers used to call 'their close friendship'. She could have quoted Diana - 'there were three people in this marriage...'!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

9/11 really was a major thing - I don't think anyone who saw any of it on TV will ever forget it.

Actually I remember what I was doing when the terrorist attacks on London happened too - I upset my husband by realising that his mother might have been there that day! Fortunately she wasn't, and quite honestly even if she had been she was most unlikely to have been affected!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Well, I got the idea for two RPGs so far out of the hype etc. - basically by wondering what people's ideas about our world and those events would be like after a couple of thousand years if they were already grossly distorted after a couple of months. The TV fiasco was down to everyone expecting the Queen Mum to be the next one to die - the Beeb activated their plan for that rather than the rather less extreme one they should have used for minor ex-royals and everyone else followed their lead. About the one postitive thing to come out of that was that when the Queen Mum did die the beeb used much less all-encompassing programme changes, because all of their research showed that Diana had been total overkill.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Oh I like that comparison between Anne Boleyn and Diana - how right you are.

Her sons appear less in the press all round, I think - possibly because they court the publicity less.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

basically by wondering what people's ideas about our world and those events would be like after a couple of thousand years if they were already grossly distorted after a couple of months. I do like that idea.

I think the coverage the Queen Mother's death and funeral got was about right for an ex-queen - and so Di really should have got about half as much, with no expectation that her ex-husband would be heavily involved at all.

Pity it took all that complete over-kill about Di to make them realise what would be adequate!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It would probably be better for William in his life-role if he had blamed the Al Fayeds as a teenager, rather than the media!

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

Already talked a bit about Di on Gill's post so wont be cluttering your LJ with repeats *G*. Although I still wonder about Harry. Those younger pictures of him sure did look like the riding master or whatever he was....just saying.... (wouldn't be the first time in a royal family for that matter and, hey, William the Conqurer was knows as William the Bastard in Normandy).

As for the rest, well I'll love a walk down the memory lane (more US than UK of course). I was in class when JFK was assasinated. My mother was the one to tell the sisters about it actually as she had heard it on the car radio while bringing my forgotten lunchbox to me at the school. We were sent home early. I mostly remember the TV coverage of the funeral and Lee Oswald's murder on TV.

I wasn't old enough to vote in 1968 but was passionately anti Vietnam war and so I signed up as a volunteer in the Bobby Kennedy campaign (I came from a very political family). Indiana had a presidential primary in May and I had been handing out flyers for him and attending political functions with my parents. I was quite emotionally attached to his goals and run for office. He was in my town (Indianapolis) the night Martin Luther King Jr was killed in fact and gave a wonderful speach in the one part of town that everyone feared would "explode" in the aftermath. His gentle talk to the gathered crowd about understanding how it felt to lose a loved one to violence defused the situation. Less than a month later he was killed.

I was watching his speech at the hotel in LA since I was so invested in his campaign. I saw it as it unfolded and never cried so hard in my life. I still get choked up thinking on it. I had been talking to the man only a week prior and then he was dead.

I was actually washing up a relatives dishes as Armstrong walked on the moon. Her husband was sick and my father and I had gone over to help out. I never saw so many dirty dishes in my life...every single dish was on that counter. They hadn't even scraped off the food! That is, sadly, my most clear memory.

I was in Florida on holiday when Diana Spencer landed her prince. I watched the wedding as I ate breakfast before heading to Disney World. I remember thinking, "she could have had ANY dress in the world and she picked THAT?" Hideous on EVERY level. I assume she thought all that material made her a real fairy princess....um...NO.

9/11....Jim and I had just arrived home from our nights work. As was our habit we turned into the all news channel to geta quick update on the worlds events before going to bed for the day (Vampire hours). Jim went into the bathroom to do the necessary and prepare for his bath and the first plane had hit. They were just discussing whether it was a small plane or maybe a cargo type and how the accident could have happened when I saw the second plane move in the screen and plow into the other building. I rushed into the bathroom and said, "Jim, come quick planes are going into the World Trade Center. Something big is happening cause it can't be two accidents." He joined me as soon as possible and we were glued to the TV from that moment on. I was in shock, in horror. Europeans can't fully appreciate the shock because you have had wars hit that close, been made to feel that unsafe. We were spoiled here because aside from Pearl Harbor before WWII we felt safe here. We sent our soldiers elsewhere but here in the states we were safe. Suddenly we were not. We grew up that day in some ways.

I remember Di's death because Jim and I had gone out for an Anniversary dinner and were headed home when we heard nothing by the biography of her on the radio and I figured she had died. The coverage was endless here (today the TV has tons of "remembering Di" crap coverage.

Okay...not going to junk up your journal with my run down memory lane *G*.

Kathleen
feeling bit old

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that you remember the death of Bobby Kennedy - it must have felt as if you had lost a friend.

As for the Neil Armstrong memory - it is the real life thing that we were doing that helps set the memory - although my daughter has pointed out to me that I am unlikely to forget what I was doing when I heard about the Chernobyl disaster (http://curiouswombat.livejournal.com/2006/04/26/) even though I am unlikely to be doing the same thing ever again.

She also said that her first memory of Dead Di Day is there being a bit on breakfast TV about possible funeral arrangements, and thinking that it must be her birthday, then thinking 'No....maybe not!'

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

I freely confess being totally disinterested in Princess Di. What's the point of being a royal if you don't ride horses? I thought her marriage with Charles was off to a very bad start when I found that she didn't ride. He ought to have married Camilla from the start. They seem to have more compatible tastes.

Di morphed into a socialite and major clothes horse after her marriage. She may have had good intentions but she seemed shallow even for the royals.

But then, I have little use for a royal family.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

Your memories revolve around royals, and mine seem to revolve around sports.

I was engaged to Mr. Bojo in 1980 and we were visiting his parents. We were watching the Olympics on television. The United States beat the heavily favored Soviet Union, and went on to defeat Finland for the Gold. I always remember that in conjunction with Mr. Bojo and wedding plans.

In 1985, I was very pregnant with our son when the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. I gave birth to a son that year; the Royals won a pennant. Neither of us has repeated.

In 1988, I entered the hospital to deliver our daughter. Doctors were releasing patients to go home so that everyone could watch our state's favorite basketball team in a playoff game. My doctor firmly instructed me to have the baby before tipoff, and I was happy to oblige. Our new daughter and I were back in our hospital room in time to watch Danny Manning lead the Kansas University Jayhawks to victory. Even better, Danny led the team to a NCAA Championship that year. I gave birth to a daughter that year; the 'Hawks won the championship. Neither of us has repeated.

I do have vivid memories connected with 9/11. We had just purchased our new home, and I was at the old one. I had the television on the morning news as I was puttering about. I heard the commentators discussing the first plane crash, and I turned in time to see the second plane slam into the World Trade Center. The skies were clear and brilliant blue. I knew these were not accidents. My first thoughts were of terrorism or a bizarre suicide pact.

It was a very difficult time. We had the stress of moving, the children were both switching schools, and we felt a terrible shock over the senseless loss of lives. We'd been to New York the previous year, and we'd had such a great time at the World Trade Center. It was unreal that the tower we had visited was gone. We had gone to the top to see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor and the great views of the city. All the people, the flags of all the countries around the world, the marble floors, the subway entrance--all gone.

When Princess Diana lost her life, I felt a sorrow for a woman I felt lost the opportunity to set her path aright, however, I didn't understand the media frenzy. Princess Di was on the television nonstop, and the magazine and newspaper were filled with every bit of minutiae from her life. All this for a woman who looked good in a designer dress. I don't wish to be flippant about another being's death, but people who have accomplished far more in their lives never make it to the national news. It was disgraceful that Mother Teresa's death hardly rated a mention in the news.

[caegey.livejournal.com]

I vividly remember where I was when Diana died. I was in a bar in New York with all of my friends. It was an Irish bar and when it was 11:50 pm (it was August 30) I announced I was born exactly 30 years ago that very minute. Suddenly, the bartender turned off the jukebox and turned the tv on. An announcement was made that Diana had been pronounced dead after a car crash, the bartender turned off the tv, put the music back on and after a moment of shock, we went back to celebrating. All of my friends remember where they were for my 30th birthday because of that coincidence.

The two other events in my life that cause a 'where were you when' reaction are 9/11 and something that surprisingly no one has mentioned - the murder of John Lennon. I was 13 years old, on the school bus and some stupid boy was making fun of his sister for crying when she heard. I had known who Lennon was since I could identify people thanks to my sisters' love of the Beatles. His death didn't effect me so much immediately as it did in later years when his music came to mean more and more to me. I've been to his memorial in Central Park, Strawberry Fields, several times.

9/11 was just so horrible. I was in my mother's house in Massachusetts, I was getting dressed. My husband called from Dublin and told me to put on the tv. Shock isn't the word. I was supposed to go to New York the next day for my best friend's wedding. I was in the house when the first tower went down and in the car with my sister on the way to her hospital appointment when the second collapsed. I remember sitting at a red light, tears streaming down my face, worried about my adoptive home and all my friends who lived there. Surreally, I watched a lot of it from a hospital waiting room. I found out later that a friend's cousin died in the collapse and the next week I was diagnosed with Parkinson's. Not happy memories.

[spikereader.livejournal.com]

I remember when Lady Di died - it completely passed us by. Up late on a Sunday morning, turned the radio on, heard dirge-like music and turned it off again. Went to B&Q, wondered why there was a flag flying at half mast outside a house we went past, and why everyone in the shop was so quiet and serious.

Eventually met up with some friends at a pub for lunch and they told us what had happened - which obviously explained all the above (but why someone felt the need to fly a flag I still don't know).

Harry's obviously a much more outgoing lad than his brother (in public at least) and such a good looking boy. Poor William's inherited the family hair - did you see that bald spot at the back. Harry is definitely a Spencer (though Chris is sure there's some James Hewitt in the mix somewhere *g*) and was the spitting image of one of his Spencer cousins when they were younger. That resemblance struck me at Di's funeral actually.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I freely confess being totally disinterested in Princess Di

I think it is true of a great many Brits too - and yet there is still this mawkish TV coverage about howwe all still feel this loss so deeply. When it is in the main news, and so I haven't managed to avoid it, I feel an urge to scream 'Oh No We Don't!'

I agree that he should have held on to Camilla the first time around - but I think as a young girl, unlike Di, she saw being a princess or a queen as too scary. She is a more intelligent woman and a much better match for him - but again in the UK there is this media frenzy along the lines of 'How Dare She? How dare she try and take the place of Saint Diana, this Whore of Babylon!'

And you are so right about the horses - why their grandmothers thought that Di would be such a perfect member of the Royals when she was scared of horses has always struck me as a sign that the two old ladies were already getting slightly ga-ga!!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The United States beat the heavily favored Soviet Union, and went on to defeat Finland for the Gold. What in? I associate those teams together in ice-hockey - am I right?

I think the 9/11 attacks must have been more poignant again for anyone who had actually been in the buildings like yourselves. But so many people outside the USA remember exactly where they were simply because it got live TV coverage. We had seen the aftermath of terrorist attacks on our news so often - the M62 coach bombing,the Birmingham pub bombing, Hyde Park, Brighton, Enniskillen, Lockerby, Victoria Station, London Bridge Station, Manchester city centre, Warrington, Omagh - they happened regularly.

Those are only the ones that immediately came to my mind - ones in Northern Ireland were so regular that they only made it out of their local news if more than four or five people were killed - which is why only Enniskillen and Omagh are big on my list. The Omagh bomb killed a much higher percentage of the population of Omagh than the 9/11 attacks did to New York - but all we saw was the aftermath - but we all feel as if we were there in New York because we saw it happen live.

I am not sure that I really like what this tells us about human nature - much better to remember our lives in sporting events or weddings like you and I, I think!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Meep - I forgot your birthday - belated Happy Birthday to you!

I wish I had been with you in that New York bar - one to have wished you a happy birthday then, and two because that was exactly the right amount of notice to have been taken of someone famous dying in a car crash.

John Lennon's death left little impression on me, I have to admit.

I also have a feeling that the 9/11 attacks had a bigger impact on, say, people in Europe than those in Japan or Australia, simply because they happened on prime time TV. Which I would guess was a carefully thought out part of the plan - but I might be giving them more credit than they deserve.

Di's death took up a good week of prime time TV in the UK - they showed absolutely nothing else but Di tributes and people sobbing hysterically, and people whose elder sisters had once played against her in a hockey match, or whose budgie had miraculously died at exactly the same moment, or whatever. There was no sport, no soaps, no anything. I think this is what I remember most about it all!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

You were lucky the pub hadn't closed in tribute! We had so much more of it because D-d usually put the TV on when she got up about 8a.m.!

I noticed William's bald spot - he's going to go bald early like Edward. I see a lot of the Spencers in William - and there is something of Prince Philip in Harry sometimes to balance his Spencerness - which tends to make me think he is probably legit - but quite possibly more by good luck....

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

Fortunately we had cable TV at the time, and managed to avoid ALL the coverage of saint Di's death.

I actually was pretty fed up about hearing about her the endless 'suffering' with bullimia/latest love interest/latest holiday without her children/her good 'works' which took a few hours each month when she wasn't on holiday.... etc etc etc... I'm actually quite fond of the monarchy, but the whole circus just brought everything to a soap opera level to me.

9/11 was about real people and felt much more real I seem to remember.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Fortunately we had cable TV at the time - you'll totally understand why it spurred us on to satellite then - as we do not have a cable option here!


I'm actually quite fond of the monarchy, but the whole circus just brought everything to a soap opera level to me.

That sums it up for me too - I wonder if we really are a tiny minority, or if the media people are a tiny minority?

I like Camilla - and it looks as if her step-sons also like her (which is obviously a lot more important than me liking her!) - so why do the media spend so much time vilifying her? Especially as the same media seem to forget that Charles and Di were divorced by the time she died - and if they insist on going with the C of E line that divorce is not acceptable and so Charles was actually her widower, then why don't they scream and shout that she was more or less in the act of commiting adultery when she died? And why don't they also regard marriage as for life etc. etc. for everyone else?

Pah! It annoys me - I should speak of this no more!!

[gillo]

Good point. A monarch who shuns all media is unlikely to do bery well. And, frankly, Al-Fayed is almost as worthwhile a hate figure as Rupert Murdoch.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

Good heavens, I delivered everything in the story except the main fact that I was talking about ice hockey! Yes, you are absolutely right!

I tend to remember years according to vacations taken that summer. That's a much more pleasant way to remember than by disaster!

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, forgive me for laughing, but you are so right on each and every account. I think Camilla is despised because she doesn't look good in a designer dress. It's as simple and shallow as that.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I'd never heard anything about Diana having an affair before her divorce; *his* affair was the only one I'd ever heard any rumors of. Of course, I'm in a different country, plus I never really paid much attention to her anyway, but that does help explain why she's not quite so fondly remembered by some as the media makes her out to be.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It wasn't 'an affair', it was 'affairs' in the plural not just before the divorce, but well before they split up as well. Hence the number of cracks in the earlier comments about Prince Harry's paternity. She was involved with the infamous James Hewitt (infamous because he made the affair public, later - she never denied it at all), around then. Will Carling (captain of the England rugby team)only became publically involved with her a couple of years after Harry's birth, to be honest.

Practically it seems as if Charles had 'phone sex' with Camilla whilst she was having the physical sex with a number of other people, and whilst he only recommenced a full physical relationship with Camilla after they split up, she was on to man four or five by that time.

When she appeared on TV fluttering her eye-lashes and saying 'there were three people in this marriage' I think many of her friends, aquaintances and staff must have been thinking, 'no, Di, there were more than that!'

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

That's very sad -- for everyone.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? Such a pity really, that their two grandmothers were so convinced that it would be a perfect match, and that Charles was so trusting in his grandmother's opinion.

Even if Charles had waited until Camilla's first marriage failed, and had married her when she was past having his children, there would have ben no problems with the succession. At the time he married Di, Andrew and Edward were both likely to marry and breed, and even if they didn't Peter Phillips (Princess Anne's son) had been born in 1997.

Di would have been so much better off marrying some other minor member of the landed gentry and spending her life shopping and having children. And probably having affairs too, but they would have been less public.