Symbolic Forest

While we’re on the subject of anniversaries:

Ten years ago, I remember waking up, in my little student flat by the university, the one with the tiny bedroom and the low, sloping ceiling that I never learned to stop banging my head on. I popped to the kitchen to get a drink; Flatmate Alan heard, and came out in his green paisley dressing gown.^*

“Princess Diana’s died,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes. They said so on the radio.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

I put the radio on, to protests, on to the local commercial pop station – and they were playing a funereal dirge. Odd. So then, we put the TV on, and found four channels of continous news.

Five years ago today, I woke up in a hotel in Paris,^** recovering from Catherine and Arnaud’s wedding. I know which day I’d rather commemorate.

* Was it really green paisley? I definitely recall something dark green and patterned.

** Well, just outside Paris, in Poissy.