Princess Diana - Where were you?

[Wellyboot]

2 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Probably a week off. There’s already plans prepared for if it happens although there are strong rumours that she is actually immortal and is planning on sticking around till her reign can pass to William and then she’ll finally return to her lizard home world. 😂
 

I'LL GET A WEEK OFF WORK????!!!!!!??? 

 

[mazola]

I remember getting home from a nightclub in Ilford (the Palais maybe? It was definitely Ilford, I remember that as it wasn't a place we would usually go to)

Put the TV on just as reports of the crash were coming in, can't remember if she was announced to have died before we went to bed, but i think it was heavily assumed by that time.

It was a weird week or so afterwards definitely, it was like she had been made a saint or something. 

The only celebrity death that had an effect on me was Prince, he was a big part of me and my friends life growing up. I remember we all became pretty obsessed with him around Sign o the Times, an obsession that lasted until the mid 90's when he went a bit shit. Managed to see him live a few times, and the dream was always to see him on the Pyramid, I truly believe it would have been the greatest show ever to have graced that stage.

I remember putting Sometimes it Snows in April on after hearing about his death, and I had tears in my eyes. Not something I can ever see happening again for someone I don't know personally. He was such a massive part of my youth.

[Crazyfool01]

3 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Probably a week off. There’s already plans prepared for if it happens although there are strong rumours that she is actually immortal and is planning on sticking around till her reign can pass to William and then she’ll finally return to her lizard home world. 😂
 

Queen a strong rumour now ?!!  

[Ayrshire Chris]

7 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Probably a week off. There’s already plans prepared for if it happens although there are strong rumours that she is actually immortal and is planning on sticking around till her reign can pass to William and then she’ll finally return to her lizard home world. 😂
 

Yes, the tv companies have everything prepared and rehearsed. Just like the queen had already recorded a message to the nation that was to be broadcast in the event of a nuclear war.  Probably along the lines of ‘you are all fucked, Phil and I are off to our bunker’

[Ayrshire Chris]

8 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

Queen a strong rumour now ?!!  

There’s more chance of Michael Eavis having a pet badger than that being true😁

[shoptildrop]

I remember I was up early as we were going to a car boot sale and wanted to get there early for the decent stuff...

I was more shocked on how she died that her actually dying, but did shed a tear at the funeral as it was so sad  

[Cooter]

I'd just returned home from a mental Orange night at the Astoria and then bang it happened.

[Tartan_Glasto]

49 minutes ago, Wellyboot said:

I'LL GET A WEEK OFF WORK????!!!!!!??? 

 

There would be a week of national mourning, but I don’t think that equates to a week off work. Places may close the day of the death and again on the day of the funeral. 

[K2SO]

Probably eating mud or breaking a relative's furniture, as I was 3 at the time.

However, you could ask me what I did yesterday and get the same answer.

[Lizzim]

I was in my local newsagent and heard snippets on the radio,. I assumed the queen mother had died.  It wasn't till later I heard the full story. Ah those days before Twitter  when news was slow to spread.

[Bennykill]

I was on my way home from a club in Southend and had stopped in a kebab shop and they had the news on and it was reporting about the crash. 

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

I recall the morning vividly. I was driving down the oddly named Avenue Road in Kings Heath in Birmingham when I heard people talking about her death on the radio. I couldn't actually believe what I was hearing, and as it was Radio 4 thought that it might be some sort of weird play that was on. I then stopped off to get some ciggies in a newsagent (I was buying B & H Gold as in those days you didn't need a mortgage to buy a packet of 20 of them) and everybody inside was talking about it, so the penny dropped that it was true. 

Moving on from there to the day of her funeral, I (and this may mortify some) went to a Diana's Dead party that a couple I know were throwing. It ended in the Diana's Dead Disco. Another of my friends arrived for the party complete with a homemade cardboard land mine. There were also children at the party early on, who were 'made' to wear black arm bands.

There was a huge flower memorial to Diana in the centre of Birmingham soon after her death. The lad above (who brought the cardboard landmine) bought some flowers and a card and went in to town to pay his respects. Only his card was a lament to Dodi. He placed the flowers and the card in amongst all the other mourners flowers and cards and, apparently, did his best to look solemn. I can't recall the full details of what was written on his card but know that the line ' Oh Dodi - you won the heart of our Queen of our Hearts with your yacht and your Fez'. Yes, he's not a very nice bloke, is he!?

[paulshane]

I was still living at my parents place, and I'd been out on the piss the night before, as is tradition for teenagers on saturday nights, and i had a habit that i never turned off my radio alarm clock at the weekend, as if I did, i'd forget to turn it back on for the week, so i was very confused when I hungoverly awoke to sombre music at 6:30AM on the sunday. flipped the alarm off as usual and surfaced about 9am when my mum told me Diana had died - didn't have the details then, that all came later.

 

but what sticks in my mind more, is the day of the funeral, everything was shut, I was meeting friends in bristol to go skateboarding, but needed petrol for my car and I had to try four or five stations before I got to one that was open. I then pushed through the centre of town, passing Castle Park where there is a disused church, and there were 50ish people hanging around, and as I clattered past I got what could possibly a world record on 'doggiest look ever' from them all. I assume this must have been the same time the funeral was being televised or something, but fuck those guys, it's a public space.

 

[Zoo Music Girl]

Who remembers where they were on 911 though? I was in Argos with my mum buying kitchen stuff before I started uni that year. Wandered over to the TVs to see what everyone was looking at. They still thought it was an accident at that point so it wasn't until we got home that we found out more.

[Wellyboot]

6 hours ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Who remembers where they were on 911 though? I was in Argos with my mum buying kitchen stuff before I started uni that year. Wandered over to the TVs to see what everyone was looking at. They still thought it was an accident at that point so it wasn't until we got home that we found out more.

I was at school, they wheeled the big telly in and we were all excited thinking it was video day... not so much. 

Don't think I really understood it until a few years later 

[Gnomicide]

Still not over the fact they cancelled the football because Di was dead. We were due to play Newcastle, I'd been looking forward to that.

[FuzzyDunlop]

When Diana died I was 13. I woke up & my mum shouted up the stairs to my dad.

Dad "As long as they don't cancel the cricket". Me & him were going to old trafford to watch Lancashire in a sunday league game.

Pissed down all day - so it was off anyway.

9/11 - I was in the last year of 6th Form. We were told a bomb had gone off in New York. I went to see my grandma after college & we watched it unfold.

The next day football went ahead. We played Blackburn away in the League Cup. Brad Friedel (an American) was in goal for them with an American Flag as his towel. A weird, surreal atmosphere. People crying during the minute's silence. The Game was a drab 2-0 defeat with neither side arsed - which finished with an 11 man scrap. 3 sendings off & the most "brutal punch" Greame Souness said he'd ever seen on a football pitch.

[WestCountryGirl]

I remember very specifically, even though I was only 6. We'd just landed back at the airport after our first big family holiday to Florida and the owner of the B&B we had left our cars at was collecting us from Gatwick, so it was only like 6 or 7 in the morning. We got in the car, and it was said on the radio that Princess Diana was dead. Cue chorus of "what did he just say?" "Turn it up!" and everyone leaning forward over the seats to hear better.

What followed for me was a very intense month of being obsessed with Princess Diana - little memorial book from WH Smith, poster on my wall. Really really weird looking back at it.

 

Edit: 9/11, again, I remember weirdly clearly. Mum had collected me from school (in Year 6 at the time) and I know exactly what corner we were going round in the car when she mentioned "Oh yeah, there's been a plane crash in New York". We got home and my brother - little older than me, and really interested in America/New York - was just watching it on TV. 

I didn't really understand the significance but I was terrified. I remember nights after that being scared when I went to bed whenever I heard a plane fly over us and my Mum having to reassure me. It was remembering these worries that has really made me think about how this Covid situation will imprint upon similarly impressionable/overly worried young kids. I can't imagine how scared it would have made me.

Edited July 20, 2020 by WestCountryGirl

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

I was at work when I heard about 911. A lad in an adjacent office came in and said you've got to have a look at this, as he had the news on his computer. I can confess to being truly stunned having watched the footage.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

Diana was a huge bandwagon thing. Ok, not the best example but a bit like with Tom Moore recently. People seeing all the flowers etc and feeling like they should be upset about it because everyone else is and then it just snowballed from there.

[Sam Y]

I wasn't born yet so I'm pretty sure I have a good alibi

[gigpusher]

I got up and turned the tv on and saw footage of Princess Diana and so immediately turned it off and put on a taped episode of Inspector Morse that we had recorded when it finished we turned it off and she was still on the telly but I saw the headline roll across the screen. My husband and I didn't really see it as a big deal other than for her kids etc and we were both kind of shocked when we saw the reaction of people around us (even people we knew who weren't royalists) 

I'll be honest I still don't understand it. There are celebrities whose deaths have impacted me greatly but generally they have been artists of some kind so whilst I don't know them, I know something of them through their work. 

[hfuhruhurr]

For Diana, playing footie in the garden with my kids when my wife called us inside (we'd been laughing and mucking about having a lark). Had to tell daughter about how Diana wasn't a fairy princess and it was sad. What I didn't realise was how hard people took the news. I ventured one of the many bad taste jokes in the office on the Monday, and got shouted and sworn at by quite a few people.

How time moves on, a few years ago, in our pub quiz (which uses a national quiz company, Redtooth?), family fortunes question: Top five answers, name Diana's lovers. We had 6 listed and needed to be selective!

911 - on a plane to Paris - that was unique.

 

[Chas]

I was flying back from New York and as we approached Heathrow, the pilot came on the intercom and announced that he had some important news to report. Of course the first thing that went through my mind was that there was some sort of problem with the aircraft, so imagine my initial relief when he went on to say that they'd just heard Diana had died.

As for 9/11, I was tucked up in bed in a hotel in Washington Square. In my half sleep I remember a plane going over and thinking that it sounded very low and then a liitle later wondering why there seemed to be more sirens outside than normal, but otherwise I slept through most of it and it wasn't until I went downstairs for a late breakfast that I realised what had been going on.

 

[fred quimby]

I got married the day she died. only heard about it from the taxi driver the day after.

 

Then went on out honeymoon n so missed all the hullabaloo and the funeral.