THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED悲劇後一個星期

FOR LONDONERS, THE abiding memory of Diana’s death is the glistening meadow of cellophane-wrapped flowers outside the Augustan frontage of her home, Kensington Palace.

I went there as the meadow began to spring up. So many of those first mourners on 31 August 1997 were Arab women. They were wandering over on that hot late summer night from the ‘Little Beirut’ of Edgware Road and the smart apartment blocks of Knightsbridge. I recall there were as many remembrances and tears for the Egyptian boy, Dodi Fayed, as for his girlfriend, the Princess.

But in the days that followed, Britons flocked to the palace in their thousands to cry for Diana and add to that field of flowers.

It was the most surreal week I, and many other Londoners, ever lived through. The streets continued to bake in the unaccustomed September sun. People couldn’t work. I went for a walk and saw shirt-sleeved businessmen queuing for hours and hours to sign the books of condolence at St James’s Palace.

Those febrile days are captured in Stephen Frears’ superb film, The Queen. It’s been said since that Britain came closest to a revolution that week than at any time for the past 300 years. But in the end, we preferred to express our profoundest emotion in the most British way imaginable: by finding a queue and standing in it. By Mark Jones 肯辛頓宮門前的空地上，擺滿玻璃紙包紮的花束，形成一片閃亮的花海，這就是倫敦人對戴安娜逝世永不磨滅的回憶。

不過當我去的時候，那片花海已堆積如山。1997年8月31日那一天，最早到那裡哀悼的人當中，許多是阿拉伯婦女。在那個炎熱的夏末夜晚，她們從有「小貝魯特」之稱的Edgware Road路及騎士橋區的時髦公寓區緩緩地走來。我記得當時也有不少人紀念和哀悼埃及商人Dodi Fayed的活動，盛況並不亞於他的王妃女友。

但是接下來的日子裡，無數英國人湧向肯辛頓宮為戴安娜哭泣，在這片空地放上更多花束。

對我和許多倫敦人而言，這是我們經歷過最不真實的一個星期。街道曝晒在異乎尋常的9月艷陽之下。人們難過得無法工作。我出去散步，看見將衣袖捲起的白領在聖詹姆斯宮外大排長龍，輪候數小時只為了在弔唁冊上簽名。

Stephen Frears執導的電影《英女皇》捕捉了那些情緒激動的日子。據說英國人在這個星期表現了過去300年來最接近革命的激烈情感。但最終我們以最英國的方式來表達我們最深刻的情感：找一條人龍，然後加入排隊的行列。撰文： MarkJones