Trip of a Lifetime/Diana

Part One-Trip of A Lifetime

I have always been attracted to British pop culture-movies, literature, television, and primarily, music. Anyone that knows we would describe me as an anglophile. An “anglophile” is a person who is fond of or admires Great Britain or England.

My love affair with England began with the assassination of John Lennon in 1980. I began to listen to music of The Beatles with fervor. As I entered high school, there was a second British Invasion of music of British bands into the U.S.: Queen, Duran Duran, Human League, Culture Club, Genesis, Tears for Fears, Eurythmics, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Phil Collins, the late George Michael.

As I am an avid fan of music, I love movies as well. I have been a fan of many British films over the years, including: “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Notting Hill”, “Shaun of the Dead”, “Made in Dagenham”, “The Imitation Game”, as well as the “Harry Potter” series.

In the last two months I have begun to watch British television through a few streaming services. I have watched many British programs through the use of Netflix, Acorn, and Britbox. I find that I enjoy police detective mystery programs as well as lifestyle programming, which includes documentaries, travel programs, cooking shows, and house hunting. With all of these resources at my disposal, I have become a huge fan of British “telly”, a slang term in England which means television. My favorites include “Agatha Raisin”, “Scott and Bailey”, “Fantasy Homes by the Sea”, “Inside Claridge’s”, “The Paradise”, and “The SuperVet.”

With this affinity for all things British, I was overjoyed when I got the opportunity to go on a trip to Great Britain. My family and I planned a trip to visit Scotland and England. In August 1997 my parents and other members of my family and I began our trip to Great Britain. We flew from the U.S. to Heathrow International Airport in London, England, which was an overnight flight. Once in London we flew to from there to Glasgow, Scotland to begin our adventure.

Over the next two weeks we traveled through Scotland and England. We went to York….

Bath…

Edinburgh Castle in Scotland…

Caerlaverock Castle in Scotland…

Stonehenge…

Avebury…

the Roman Baths in Bath, England…

…the picturesque Cotswolds region, including the idyllic little village of Castle Combe…

Big Ben…

The Tower of London…

and many other lesser known tourist sites, including John Knox’s House in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Ruthwell Cross.

In planning our trip, we were also charting our family genealogy, which we traced to Dumfriesshire in Scotland. We made a special point of visiting the region, as well as the Ruthwell church.

The Ruthwell church contains an ancient Celtic cross. The cross had been ordered destroyed during the Scottish reformation by the Presbytery of Aberdeen in the 1600s. The church kept the broken pieces of the cross, which they then buried it in the dirt floor of the church, where it remained for over 200 years. It was resurrected in the early 1800s and placed in a small chamber next to the sanctuary. Today it stands in the church in Ruthwell, Scotland. While in the church, we discovered one of our ancestors served as a deacon in the church. That was a powerful discovery to our family as my father and another family member are ordained ministers.

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/ruthwell/ruthwellcross/images/cross-450.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthwell_Cross

The greatest challenge to me on the trip was the cuisine. London is now an epicenter of culinary creativity. However on our trip, it was a challenge to find things I wanted to eat. We ate mostly pub fare, which did not sit well with me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was beginning to suffer from my allergy to soybeans. If I could eat the food I wanted to eat, it quite often made me sick. I remember feeling positively ecstatic when we went to the Hard Rock Café and the Rainforest Café in London and got American food.

Food challenges aside, it truly was the trip of a lifetime. We would remember that trip for years to come. Little did we know at the time, we would all come to remember that trip for a completely different reason altogether.

Part Two-Diana

On the last full day of our trip we were awakened by a knock on our hotel room door. My mother was there, instructing us to turn on the television. I turned on the TV.

We were shocked to learn what much of the world already knew – that Princess Diana had been killed in a high speed collision in Paris. We watched the news footage on the B.B.C.-the British Broadcasting Corporation-to find out the latest information on her passing. In those days, the internet and the World Wide Web were in its infancy. The only place to get up to the date news was on television.

We quickly remembered that we had plans that morning to attend Sunday worship services. Traveling on this trip with two ministers, it felt like we went to every church in Great Britain, visiting a cathedral, an accompanying graveyard, and attending evensong services, which are choral worship services held daily, at dusk.

We had been to Wells Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, York Minster…

as well as Bath Abbey.

That morning, we worshiped at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

As we walked from our B&B (Bed and Breakfast) to St. Paul’s, we noticed a strange air in London. We could not figure out what was different; there was a marked change in the city. Perhaps this was how it was on Sunday mornings. Maybe that was normal. We were about to discover that the ambiance in the city was anything but normal.

We entered the massive cathedral and found places to sit for the worship service. Before the service began, the sanctuary of the cathedral was filled with a palpable tension. The parishioners assembled to worship that morning were mourning the loss of Princess Diana.

Being at St. Paul’s morning, sitting in the massive cathedral, it was an intimate experience. It felt as if the walls of the cathedral enveloped and embraced all present that morning, supporting and holding them up as they were brought to their knees with grief.

The homily that morning was about Princess Diana. The member of clergy pointed out that it had been 16 years, 1 month and 2 days since she and Prince Charles had been married in that very cathedral. As he spoke, several members of the congregation sobbed, expressing their grief at the loss of their princess.

To be in England at the time was a completely surreal feeling. That was what was different about being in London on that morning-grief. The city was so quiet because the nation was grieving. Here we were foreigners on vacation and experienced first-hand a country’s collective grief.

After Sunday morning services in St. Paul’s, we went to the British Museum. As we went about our day in London we heard reports that the early editions of the Sunday morning paper had a headline reading: “Diana Injured in crash…” or something to that effect. We made it a point to visit every newsstand we happened upon to pick up a copy of that early edition of the paper. However, by that time of the afternoon, all of the earlier editions of the morning newspapers had been pulled from circulation. They had been replaced with new editions, which said “Diana killed in crash.”

As we roamed the streets of London that day, we did not see a native Briton. The only people we saw were like us, foreigners on holiday (or vacation.) What we later came to know was that Britons were at home, watching coverage of Princess Diana’s death on television. In fact, the power companies in England experienced a surge in power that morning as people around Great Britain woke up, saw the newspaper headlines, and turned on the television for the latest information on Diana’s death. It was said that England en masse set their tea kettles on the stove to make a cup of tea to comfort themselves in their profound grief.

The combination of shock, grief and sorrow felt by the nation that day was unprecedented. I’ve heard it said that the loss of Princess Diana in the U.K. could be compared to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the United States. The entire U.S. was in a collective period of shock, grief and mourning for days on end. It was just this way in England with Diana’s death.

To make a personal comparison, imagine yourself to be visiting the U.S. during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. If you are an American, picture yourself visiting the U.S. that day as a citizen of a foreign nation. To be that close to a level of national grief and sorrow, to witness it first hand, is an immensely powerful experience. It is at once a privilege and an embarrassment to be so close to such raw pain and vulnerability.

The next day, Monday, was our day to fly home. We got up early, finished our packing, and began to travel to Heathrow Airport to catch our flight. Along the way from our B&B to Heathrow, we passed Buckingham Palace. The now famous wall of flowers along the palace gates were just beginning to grow.

At Heathrow Airport, before we boarded our airplane, I made sure to visit the newsstand. There I saw many special commemorative editions of London newspapers honoring Princess Diana. I bought two of these newspapers.

In the days following Princess Diana’s death, 6,000 people per day came to Buckingham Palace to lay flowers and pay their respects. At that time, a collective diary of remembrance was started for members of the public. People could come and write their condolences to the Royal family, or write a note to Princess Diana herself. People waited in line for eleven hours to write in this diary of grief.

The funeral for Princess Diana was held on September 6^th, 1997 in Westminster Abbey. The funeral was not a royal one; Diana had been stripped of her royal title upon her divorce from Prince Charles, just a year before. However, with Britons visiting Buckingham Palace by the thousands to express their grief, the royal family knew that they had to have the ceremony in a venue that would accommodate the most people.

Thousands of people gathered along the streets of the funeral procession. Princess Diana’s casket was shrouded in the Royal Standard, the flag of the royal family, considered by many to be a good will gesture from the Royal family. Crowds wailed as Prince Charles, his sons William and Harry, Prince Phillip, and Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, marched behind Diana’s casket. Crowds gathered in Hyde Park and other parks around London, watching the funeral service on large television screens.

The funeral was on the Saturday after we returned from our trip. I had to work that day; however, I recorded the coverage of her funeral on television. Watching the funeral on tape that night, I saw the people gathered in Westminster Abbey for the service. My body chilled, knowing my family and I had been there days before.

I have many photographs I took on the trip, many of which I have shared here, as well as some books, and a couple of shirts from sites we visited on our trip. However it must be said that my prized possessions of that trip are the commemorative editions of London papers honoring Princess Diana. I keep them in my home in an archival box, away from any light source, wrapped in papers that protect the newspaper from aging. I also have the program from that morning’s service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The trip we went on was twenty years ago. Princess Diana died twenty years ago today. It seemed fitting to share my family’s trip, honor Diana's passing, and to share our experiences on the day that Princess Diana passed. It truly was the trip of a lifetime, in every sense of the word.