Reply #5: There were a lot of lunatics, of course

[moggie]

There's never a shortage of lunatics, and the confluence of celebrity, royalty and tragedy was irresistible to many emotional vampires. But appearances can be deceptive. For every person weeping and rending their garments, there were others who just wanted to be there to witness history, dry-eyed. The funeral drive passed not far from where I live, so on the day I walked up to the main road to watch it pass (and I'm as anti-royalist as you can get). There was a huge procession of people making their way there, and they had something of a carnival atmosphere: it seemed to me that they regarded it as a spectacle to enliven an otherwise ordinary day, and a chance to get some photos for the album, rather than an occasion for mourning. The media, of course, had other ideas.