So Where Were You Guys When You Heard The News 20 Years Ago?

One thing I remember about the whole thing was a week or so later when they had the funeral. I was looking to move at the time, and I'd rang around a few likely places to find a room to rent. I arranged to go see one around noon on the day of the funeral, whenever that was.

I drove into London on the A2, which is a pretty decently big road - and it was almost completely empty. I didn't drive into the centre or anything, only about half way in from the M25, but I saw like three other cars the entire way in.

I gets to the house in plenty of time for the appointment and nobody is in. So I wait for the landlord for a good half hour. Finally I rang him up and asked him when he would be along.

He was completely incredulous. He literally said to me "Don't you know what day it is?!" in the most outraged tone you can imagine, as if the very idea that I'd expect him to turn up was just impossible to believe. I said "Yeah, it's Saturday. We're supposed to be meeting at noon, right?"

He hung up on me.

Needless to say, I didn't end up renting the place.

I found the whole Diana thing to be little more than mildly sad news. She never meant much to me in life - though I did once get an up close if very brief glimpse of her in real life, which made me smile (she went past me in a car). But my reaction was pretty much "Wow, really? That's a real shame." I was way more sad at the death of Robin Williams, or Terry Pratchett, or any number of other famous people that I cared more about.

But that experience brought it home to me that people who never met her and didn't know her at all were actually genuinely upset by her death, as if she had been a family member. I find that kind of weird, to be honest, but it takes all sorts.

Anyway, that's about as close as I get to having an interesting story about Princess Diana.