It’s nice said his wife Moira
It’s nice,” said his wife Moira.Few people were crying, and there were no signs of the grieving that had marked the previous day’s events. Instead, people sat with picnics, or walked, chatting quietly, examining the notes and flowers that hung from trees even a quarter mile from the gates of the palace, makeshift shrines heavy with the scent of candles.Palace officials announced yesterday that tomorrow, the flowers will be cleared. The fresh ones will be given to old people’s homes and hospitals at the request of Diana’s family, while dead flowers will be turned into compost to grow new plants in Kensington Gardens.But many of those present yesterday said that the memorials would continue “We will be bringing flowers again I think it should carry on. I go to my mother’s grave to put flowers, so this is just the same,” said Moira McClune. “This is just somewhere where you’re not intruding on the family’s grief.”Elizabeth Beesley, from Bournemouth, and her mother Joan Hounsell from Poole, said they had friends who were planning to come and lay flowers later in the week.”I think it will die down after this week, but there should be a focal point, because people will still want to come and pay their respects, whether they’re from out of town, or America, or whatever,” Ms Beesley said. “But I think there will always be flowers here.”Suggestions that the prolonged pilgramage to the gardens might be verging on the unhealthy were swifty batted down.”How can it be unhealthy to want to commemorate someone’s life?” said Steve Hampton, from Chicago, on holiday in London. “You guys just get uncomfortable because it doesn’t seem like a British thing to do.”But Karen Lombard and Philip Court from South Africa – while admitting that the flowers “took their breath away” – thought there should be a limit.”It should carry on for another week or so, then give it a rest.
It’s not fair to make it a shrine given that it was the boys’ home. It just makes it more difficult for them to get on with it,” said Karen Lombard.”But what the palace should do is collect up all those cards and poems with the messages for the boys. It would be a big help for them to know how much they are all loved.”. The winds of change were still pressing on the Royal Family yesterday despite their withdrawal once again into their private fastness of Balmoral. In a service at Crathie parish church attended by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, Diana, Princess of Wales, was praised by the Queen’s chaplain, the Rev Robert Sloan, as a loving mother with a special personality – a stark contrast to this chilly service a week earlier when Diana wasn’t mentioned. Immediately after the service, the Queen was joined for lunch at Balmoral by Tony Blair and his wife Cherie.
The Prime Minister remained at the royal residence on Deeside, in Scotland, for most of the afternoon but on leaving refused to answer questions on what was discussed.
In a probably unprecedented departure, the Prime Minister’s motorcade stopped shortly after leaving the gates of Balmoral, but on the opposite bank of the Dee, and he and his wife got out briefly to shake hands with well-wishers. More than 400 people had gathered outside the parish church to see the royal party, including the Queen Mother attend the morning service and the Queen was given warm, if somewhat restrained applause as she was driven back to her castle. A bank of flowers placed in memory of the princess has been growing beside the gate since Thursday. Prior to that flowers had been cleared each day, to the dismay of some who regarded their removal as unsympathetic.The plunge in public esteem for the Royal Family last week began with the bad impression made by the morning service at Crathie. Princes William and Harry accompanied the Prince of Wales and their grandparents, but there was no mention of Diana during the service.
