Diana

It is 1 June, the first day of winter. It is 20 degrees celsius in the north of New Zealand and people are swimming in the ocean.We are away at Langs Beach for King’s Birthday weekend. It is glorious.

Being King’s birthday weekend I found myself telling my daughter about the King’s first wife, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. It is still strange to me to hear Catherine referred to as “Princess of Wales”. When I hear those words I automatically think of Diana.

Diana has been lurking in my consciousness lately because Facebook keeps providing me with a selection of short Diana videos. What is that all about? Facebook consistently picks videos of horses, sheep dogs and Diana for me (which I confess to quite liking).

I was enchanted by Lady Diana Spencer from the moment I first set eyes on her, when I was a primary school aged child. My first memory of her is watching her as a kindergarten teacher being chased to her Mini by the British tabloids after her engagement to the now King. She was gorgeous in the same way I thought Agnetha from ABBA was gorgeous (who I was equally enamoured with as a little girl) - tall and blonde with big, soulful blue eyes.

I crossed paths with Diana three times in my life and I can confirm that she had an extraordinary beauty that photographs did not properly capture. There was sadness there and perhaps vulnerability - it is hard to appreciate how young she was - only 36 when she died and just 19 years old when she was chased to her Mini by the press.

My first interaction was in 1983. It was at Eden Park and I was amongst 35,000 children at a reception for the Prince and Princess of Wales. There was a walk-about and much to my disappointment I got to shake hands with the Prince and the Prime Minister, but not the Princess. She was right in front of me though with her green dress and white hat. I got a really good photo of her which I will hopefully find one day (it’ll be in a wardrobe at my parents’ house).

Fast forward 13 years to 1996. I arrived in the United Kingdom in November of that year after 6 weeks travelling in the US. I was pretty close to penniless and did what any sensible person with experience in retail would do in the lead up to Christmas. I got a job in a shop. And it wasn’t just any shop either, it was Harrods.

I am so pleased I got to experience two pre Christmases at Harrods. I was in the Food Halls both times - my first stint (1996) was in the Fromagerie and my second (1997) in Gift Box and Hampers. This might be a controversial opinion, but I think the buyers in the Food Halls at Harrods have the BEST jobs in the world. Imagine travelling the globe to sample cheese or wine or chocolate or coffee? If I could live my life again I think I might aim to be the cheese or chocolate buyer for Harrods.

As part of my job I got to try all the cheeses and can confirm that (as you would expect) the Harrods cheese buyer had exceptionally good taste in cheese. He had regular trips to Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands to source exquisite and rare cheeses made with truffles or by nuns. We had big chats about the emergence of New Zealand as a player in the gourmet cheese market. In case customers needed advice I got to try the wines that matched with the cheeses. It really was an amazing place to work and I loved it. While I was at Harrods I had my second brush with Diana.

One evening when I worked there, Harrods stayed open after hours so Diana could do her Christmas shopping. She came through the Food Halls with the owner, Mohamed Al-Fayed (the father of Dodi, her boyfriend at the time she passed away). Unfortunately she did not buy cheese, but she visited the chocolate and wine counters. She smiled and waved to us. She was in an elegant navy trouser suit and coat.

The last time I saw her in person was during the summer of 1997, shortly before she passed away. I was having lunch with a group of insurance people at a restaurant on the north bank of the Thames. Diana came into the restaurant with her body guards and a group of girlfriends. Her party was seated separately to everyone else but had to walk through the restaurant to get to the private dining room.

There are three things that struck me about her when I was in her presence. She was tall, she moved gracefully and her skin was flawless.

I was in Rijeka, Croatia when I learned that Diana had died. A bent over, old Croatian widow* accosted my friend and I in the lift as we went downstairs for breakfast. After asking us if we were English (we said yes, it was close enough) she said in a heavy accent “Lady De, she dead”. We could not get any further sense from her so I went to the hotel reception to find someone who spoke English. They confirmed Diana was dead but we could not get any other detail. We drove straight to Split that day to find a hotel with Sky TV so we could watch the news in English. What a terrible, shocking, sad, surreal day.

I was in Drvenik, the village of my grandparents’ birth, on 6 September 1997, the day of Diana’s funeral. My friend’s flatmate, Gareth, a police officer, was on duty that day. He was one of thousands of police officers lining the route of the funeral procession. 2 to 2.5 billion people watched the funeral worldwide, making it one of the most watched televised events in history.

Poor beautiful, young, complex, vulnerable, kind, flawed, Diana. It is hard to describe her to my daughter in a way that does her justice. Yes, she was gorgeous, but she absolutely shone in her charity work, especially for the downtrodden and marginalised. She had a way of authentically connecting with people and was largely responsible for the destigmatising of HIV and AIDs. I doubt I’ll ever witness a similar level of collective grief for a public figure ever again.

So, today, on a holiday weekend celebrating the King’s birthday, I am thinking about his first wife, Diana, who I’ll always associate with the title, the Princess of Wales.

Have a great weekend everyone. And if you’d like to witness some casual racism, feast your eyes on this UK news report from 1983.

And if you’ve ever wondered what a daft herding dog would do if confronted with a robot lawn mower, we found out the answer this morning.

Enjoy!

*I presume she was a widow because she was in the uniform of my Baba and her girlfriends (all widows), black dress, with a matching black headscarf. My Dad used to affectionately call my Baba’s friends the “flock of crows”. They were always on foot and if I heard them approaching (speaking and laughing loudly in Serbs-Croatian) I tried to get to my Baba’s house as quickly as possible because there was always lots of delicious baking when the flock of crows descended.