No, we were going to Northamptonshire. Specifically, to Althorp, family seat of the Spencers, and the final resting place of Diana, Princess of Wales. In Northampton, the football team is known as the Cobblers.
As we left the home counties and shuffled into the shires, it was strange to think of Dianaβthat mercurial, volatile body of light, forever flying off in pursuit of pain or pleasure from one hotspot or fleshpot to anotherβgrowing up among these endless fields of nothing in the empty heart of England.
We stopped to buy a newspaper, in which I read about a survey that claimed that the Midlands was the place in all the country that people least dreamed of moving to.
Quelle surprise. Few women leave their children without extreme provocation, and we can only guess what this spirited young woman had to put up with from her husband who, by all accounts, could rage and sulk for England. So Diana came to liveβ13 years old, motherlessβin the middle of all these fields. Her desolation can only be imagined.
She never bothered becoming a debutante, despite being far more aristocratic than most of the upstarts who these days sell out their meritocratic birthright in order to ape the useless antics of the upper classes.
