In Memoriam

‘HOW do you remember Princess Diana? What do you mean ‘who’? Princess Diana. The Queen of Hearts. The People’s Princess. Died seven long, painful years ago.

And still the tears flow…

Nope? Oh, well – the rest of us have our individual ways of remembering the woman who wouldn’t be queen.

For instance, at Anorak Towers we have to walk down the Diana Memorial Stairs every morning as we descend to our basement office.

Every morning that is except the morning of August 31 when each year we throw ourselves down the stairs instead in memory of the dearly departed.

However, others remember Diana in different ways. There is, for instance, the new Diana Memorial Fountain in London’s Hyde Park, built for a mere £3.6m (raised by selling teddy bears left at the gates of Kensington Palace in the weeks after that fateful night).

Hello! doesn’t need a fountain – or, more accurately, a sloping stone ring – to remember the woman who brought so much sunlight into people’s lives and so much money into its coffers.

Unfortunately, deadlines meant that it couldn’t be at the official opening of the memorial, but it has no doubt that the ceremony was a ‘moving’ one.

As for the fountain itself, the magazine does not express an opinion other than to say that opinion is divided – some critics calling it a ‘storm drain’, others ‘sleek, contemporary and elegant’.

One visitor even told Hello!: ‘It doesn’t look very beautiful and it doesn’t remind me of Diana. I came especially to see it and was disappointed.’

We at Anorak must disagree – we also went especially to see it and it reminded us exactly of Diana.

Shallow, ludicrously expensive, wet, moving round in circles and serving no real purpose…’

Posted: 7th, July 2004 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink