Painting the house 6 September 1997
	We've all gone crazy Mourning all day and mourning all night Falling over ourselves to get all Of the misery right. - Tim Rice, Evita

A couple of weeks ago, one of the kids on the estate of my house in Stockport put a brick through my kitchen window. He was only five and, bless him, he didn't think anyone lived there. It got it repaired, but the window frame needed repainting. As I'd been meaning to change the lurid yellow of the frames round the windows and doors at the front of my house for some time, I decided that this was the ideal opportunity to paint it a tasteful racing green.

First I washed the windows, which had become quite mucky with cobwebs and attendant grit. Then I applied a grey undercoat, waiting for about half an hour before it had dried enough to let me paint over it in green gloss. All the while, there was some live coverage of a procession and church service on the TV, but I can honestly say that watching paint dry was more interesting than Diana's funeral.

The drive home took me southbound on the M1 from Nottingham. That was an experience. Normally on a Sunday afternoon the M1 is very busy with people returning to London from a weekend away. Not today. Today, the road was completely empty, in both directions. It was like one of those post-apocalyptic movies - Night of the Comet, for instance - where the human race has been almost eradicated except for some (thankfully good looking) survivors who spend half the film driving along eerily deserted streets. Next time they need to film one of those, they should forget about getting up at 4am to find locations sufficiently deviod of people. Just wait until a popular member of the Royal Family dies, and film during the funeral.

It turned out, though, that the M1 actually had as many cars on it as usual, it's just that they were all parked about ten miles south of the M6, waiting for Diana's funeral cortege to come past on the other carriageway. There was simply no way anyone was driving anywhere at that point - all three lanes were full of stationary traffic and people wndering around the carriageway in a manner that would normally have got them a prime spot on Police, Camera, Action! I joined them - it seemed the thing to do. Besides, when else was I going to be able to take a stroll on the fast lane of the M1?

Suddenly, I found myself rather caught up in the mood of the nation. Here I was, actually about to see Diana's funeral cortege process past, and I'd be able to say that I was there. That I was a part of the funeral. That I, too, bowed my head in respect as the hearse passed by. That I stood in silence with the other mourners on the M1, sharing their grief for a life cut short so tragically.

But as it happened, the funeral turned off the M1 two miles south of where I was, so all I say was a group of about ten angry-looking police motorcycles, followed by a twenty mile long northbound traffic jam.

Serves me right, really. I didn't want to mourn Diana because I was especially sad that she'd died; I wanted to do it because that's what everyone else was doing, and I didn't want to feel left out. Let's face it - this is the event of 1997. It's morbid, but I wanted to be a part of it.