The Queen and I

I've just come back from seeing the movie 'The Queen' with two friends, one of whom called whilst we were queuing up to buy tickets to say:
"Am I in the wrong place?"
"Well, that depends where you are"
"I'm at Theatre X"
"Well yes, then you're not here and definitely at the wrong place"
"Shit, fuck, am I really" urgent whispering 'excuse me what movie is this we're watching' "Fuck, Flags of our Fathers. I'm sitting in the wrong movie eating Milk Duds. I'll be right there".

Nice one Jen (who finally did make it, yay)

Anyway, the film was brilliant, as I'm sure more than enough people have already said, Helen Mirren surefire Oscar blah blah blah. The thing is, that time, Diana's death, is a very poignant time for me. Not because I have some special attachment to the 'Queen of Hearts', actually not at all, I personally think she was a bit of a player towards the end; but because Princess Diana's funeral was my wedding day. No joke. LK and I got married in England on the day they buried Princess Di.

So to sit there and watch all the footage of the media frenzy surrounding her death, and the funeral, was to relive that incredibly frenzied week of my life. I doubt many people get the opportunity to do that.

The night she died I was blissfully unaware of the massive hangover that was ready to pounce courtesy of my hen-night the evening before. Far too much champagne and tequila, coupled with Mexican food from North Yorkshire truly is a recipe for disaster. LK wasn't even in the country yet, and he was the first person I spoke to that morning, calling from the States, neither of us aware bizarrely enough of Diana's death even though it was already all over the news. I went back to bed to continue to be violently ill, and in the end my brother was the one who broke the news. he said 'Di and Dodi have been killed' and I thought 'bloody hell, who'd want to kill them', and then instantly, 'bloody hell, they'll have the funeral on Saturday won't they'. Me. Me. Me.

I went back to throwing up for a couple of hours until my Mother In Law called from Heathrow to say she was catching an earlier flight up to Leeds and would be three hours early. I was still so deathly ill I had to have my Mum drive me. What fun memories this film brought back. I don't really remember too much about the Queen being perceived as being cold and heartless, no doubt because I was in the middle of organising my chuffing wedding. I do remember all the piles of flowers everywhere, the collective hysteria, my hairdresser cancelling because my, sorry, our, wedding was going to be the same day as the funeral. I do remember the Archbishop of Canterbury coming on the telly advising couples who were planning to get married on Sept 6th 1997, that even though they had probably thought long and hard about canceling (I was thinking, what? you're joking - people were already flying in) that 'love is stronger than death' and Diana would have wanted the weddings to go ahead. The Minister actually made reference to her funeral in our wedding service, mentioning 'love is stronger than death'. I do remember that.

There's a lot of gloriously inappropriate and wonderful anecdotes about our wedding, which I will save for a later date when I'm starved for better things to blog about. The point of this entry is; whenever you hear anyone complaining about their wedding disasters, the dropped cake, or the late car, or the rain or spilling wine on their dress, just remember this. We got married on a NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING.