1981 At Forty - Part 1: Charles and Di

                

Fed up with the virus scenario? We now live in a world that is very odd indeed. A world in which families are breaking apart as 'covid deniers' argue fiercely with 'covid believers'. A world in which civil liberties vanish like spit on a griddle and the public applauds. But whether you think it's all in good spirit, the facts are totally transparent and anything else is a rancid conspiracy theory, or you believe the figures don't add up and the 'Great Reset' and Big Pharma are far greater threats, we offer you an escape. Yep, an escape to 1981.

I can't promise that 2021 won't infiltrate slightly, but most of this blog post is pure 1981 - in the immortal words of Big Audio Dynamite a few years later: 'Time slide, place to hide...'

We can hardly believe 1981 is now forty years ago. In the pre-mobile phone, pre-yuppie boom 1980s, where computers were slow and odd and strictly for professors and geeks, what were we into?

Well, amongst other things... Rubik's Cube, CB radio (so exciting as less than 50% of UK households had a landline phone and the mobile was still a few years down the road), Space Invaders, the Space Shuttle, riots, Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and...

Charles and Di.

Goodness, the quiet, posh girl who'd soared into the spotlight in 1980, was apparently about to have a fairy tale ending - and marry her prince.

It all turned out quite differently and very sadly, of course.

Mugs, tea towels, dolls, even a Rubik's Cube - the hottest craze of the year. Charles and Di were everywhere in 1981.

Slow start for the Cube... the trademark was registered in the UK on 7 May 1980 but, due to a huge shortage, the first Cubes did not start arriving until just before Christmas. In the spring of 1981, we were fully stocked and the craze raged. And, like so many other things, the Cube commemorated the royal wedding in July.

The Sunday Times magazine review of 1981 - featuring royals and Rubik's.

I've never been a royalist, so I was unimpressed by the Royal Wedding mania. In my family, the view was that the Royal Family 'lived off the fat of the land' and was an anachronism. 

I was not initially impressed by Lady Diana Spencer, either. The media dubbed her 'Shy Di', but I thought the way her eyes slid away was far more likely to be evidence of slyness. However, I think she proved me wrong. Diana was refreshingly human, as it turned out - in my humble opinion, of course. She was warm, concerned, and very much a people person.

And Charles? Simply not my scene. I'll say no more.

But, in 1981, the Royal Wedding thrilled many. The news was full of it, and no angle was left unexplored as the public clamoured for more.

True Romances magazine plotted the future of the couple, via the wondrous world of astrology. It makes for quite sad reading now, but at the time many believed that the royal marriage was the start of a glittering new era for the family.

Having taken into account planetary placements and aspects on their respective birth charts, and the fact that both Charles and Diana had Leo ascendants, astrologer Peter Vidal wrote:

ARE CHARLES AND DIANA IN AFFINITY? WILL LADY DIANA FIT IN WITH THE ROYALS AND BE HAPPY? WILL IT BE A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE? WILL CHARLES AND DIANA MAKE GOOD PARENTS?

How will the marriage work out? Charles and Diana are well-matched, and are a handsome couple with the world at their feet. Factors occurring in both horoscopes will make for happiness and contentment. Charles will gain noticeably in poise and confidence; Diana will be radiant.

The Royal Wedding was a day of great optimism for all admirers of the Royal family. And readers of True Romances thrilled to Peter Vidal's rosy predications.

But even astrologers can't always be right. Not even the fact that Charles and Diana were both sun water signs - she Cancer, he Scorpio, could make things right.

Well I never!

We return to the buzzing world of 1981 soon - all together now: 'Qua qua, fa diddily qua qua...'

A Mug For The '80s...

Here up at '80s Actual Towers, we're right mugs for all things 1980s, so in this post we've decided to up our mug status by looking at mugs. 1980s mugs, that is. We bought this new graffiti design in 1989, and the design continued to be wildly popular into the early 1990s. 'BUY BLITISH!' 'SAVE TREES EAT A BEAVER!' 'IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED CHEAT.' 'MICKEY MOUSE IS A RAT!' FABULOUS!

What about mugs reflecting crazes of the 1980s? Well, you couldn't find a better representation than the two 1981 mugs pictured below featuring the mighty Rubik's Cube. The Cube was one of the greatest success stories of the decade, sweeping into our lives in 1980 (or, more likely, 1981 - there was a shortage) and then taking those aforementioned lives over. Could we solve it? Our fascination was endless.

Sadly, I couldn't solve it and had to concede that it really was a 'mug's game'!

One of our very fave 1980s mug designs is this lovely pedestal 'Let's Break' design - with the cosily boiling kettle. There was also the same pic with a 'Have A Break' and 'Break Time' slogan. All three designs are still favourites for a comforting brew on a busy day up at '80s Actual Towers.

These mugs are also great for packet soups. Being slightly smaller than most, if you stir it up well you get a nice thick tasty slurp rather than the usual insipid powdery hot water.

Just remember to stir well and make sure the powder is fully dissolved - the rounded base makes it easy. YUM!

The wedding of Princes Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July, 1981, provoked a welter of souvenir merchandising. This mug seems particularly evocative. The newsprint quality of the photographs would never pass muster today.

Here's our old mate Henry's Cat with a very '80s message: 'Nothing succeeds like excess!' Absolutely!

Talking about famous cartoon cats, what about Garfield? From 1981 (in America) and 1983 (England) we were swamped with Garfield stuff.

And here's a word about Garfield mugs and general merchandising. If you have Garfield merchandise it will date from the 1980s at the earliest. If it says '1978' on it that's simply because it was the year when the character first appeared in American newspaper comic strips - was first copyrighted - and he looked liked this:

His appearance evolved during the 1980s and evidence of that evolvement is obvious from the merchandising. Jim Davis founded his own Garfield merchandising company, Paws Inc. in 1981, and that's when the flood of Garfield stuff began. He made his way to English shops a year or two later.

1978 being the first copyright date for Garfield, it was often used on subsequent merchandising. The same rule applies to the Pac-Man mug later in this blog post. It's dated '1980' because that was the year the character debuted, but the mug is actually from a couple of years later.

So, next time you nip onto eBay and see a Garfield mug - apparently from 1978, don't be fooled. It won't be. 

The mug featured here actually has two copright dates - 1978 and 1981!

Right, pressing on, we say 'qua qua, fa diddily qua qua' and meet our next mug... 

Yes it's Adam (with the 'D' authentically the wrong way round) and his Ants on this little beauty from 1981. Actually, we loved Adam. We think he made David Bowie - even in David's fab 1980 Ashes To Ashes video - look like Hilda Ogden. Adam had great street cred, and also great behind-the-bike-sheds-with-a-ciggie-and-a-transistor-radio cred. It's easy to go all tongue in cheek about it now, but I genuinely felt Adam was something of a marvel back in the early 1980s and I still treasure the memories. The music, the videos, the image... fantastic! 

And here's another larger-than-life 1980s celebrity - Mr T - BA Baracus himself - from the A Team. Some English TV critics were dubious about the show when it debuted here, but the kids loved it and it quickly assumed legendary status. 

This mug is simply very 1980s and very nice. Well I like it. It dates from 1986.

A must-have from Argos and a few other sources from around 1983 were these soup bowl mugs. Comfortingly country retro, these were wildly popular and, if your chosen '80s lifestyle was retro country chic, ideal for display in your kitchen. This is Scotch Broth, but many other designs were available, and they also came as plates, bowls and possibly woolly hats. I jest. I think. 

Another favourite - the Cadbury's chocolate block mug from 1983. Lovely with hot chocolate. And a couple of choc bickies... And maybe even a couple of bars of chocolate. I'd particularly like... 

... a Wispa bar! Bite it and believe it as the ads said. Scrummy!

Wanna be a yuppie? Yus, matey boots? Well, this 1984 mug is for you. This was before the hugely booming bit of the 1980s had really got underway, so the yuppie 'wants' seem a bit naff and feeble now. We still had three years to wait for Gordon Gekko.

Orville! Remember that chart-buster of late 1982 - Orville's Song? 'Orful, who is your very best friend?' 'You are.' 'I'm gonna help you mend your broken NECK!' That's what we sang. Hard-hearted gits, weren't we? But this is a very lovely mug, is it not?

And here he is, then! The one, the only, PAC-MAN! Remember the copyright date rule we discussed regarding Garfield? Well, this Kiln Craft mug contains the copyright date '1980' for the character, but the mug dates from around 1982.

The kettle never stops boiling at our place so we'll be revisiting the 1980s teatime soon...

BANG! How The 1980s Began... Tabloid Snippets From The First Two Years...

1980 - Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please... The anthem of that summer. LOVE IT!!!! Listen to it whilst you're reading through this article - it'll help bring that early 1980s vibe flooding back...

"TWO PINTS OF LAGER AND A PACKET OF CRISPS PLEASE!" we all squawked in the summer of 1980. This was thanks to Splodgenessabounds, of course. 

June 24, 1980:

Britain's most outrageous punk group have rocked into the charts with their first single.

The band, Splodgenessabounds, pour out four letter words, show their bare bottoms and break wind on stage.

Their recording of Simon Templar has reached No. 7 only four weeks after its release.

But it is the B-side - a song called Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Please - which has caught on with the fans.

The group's founder, lead singer Max Splodge, 21, said in London last night: "Before I take my trousers down and moon, I always take a special powder so that I can break wind effectively."

The only person in the eight-strong band without a bare bottom role is girl singer Baby Greensleeves, 22.

Baby, who sometimes takes her dog Two Pints to the group's concerts, said: "I'd moon as well, but it would take too much time because of the gear I wear."

And what was the song about? Some desperate young lad trying to get served in a packed-out pub. Been there so many times. Mind you, if I'd been a barmaid/bloke, I probably wouldn't have served me either.

Max Splodge, Two Pints... writer and singer, spilled the beans about the song years later:

"One night I rushed into The Crown in Chislehurst waving a pound note, trying to buy two pints of lager and a packet of crisps. The bell rang and the bloke wouldn't serve me. The guys in the band were out of their heads on magic mushrooms and thought this was hysterical. The next day I put down a drum track and bass line and just shouted, 'two pints of lager and a packet of crisps...' Mike Reid played it on Radio 1 and it started selling 17,000 copies a day. No one could believe it. It sold a quarter of a million copies and got to No 7."

Cor, the '80s were starting out dead posh, weren't they? 

 Splodgenessabounds' wonderful 1980 anthem on glorious vinyl, tucked away on the B-side with Michael Smith's Talking Bum.

 1981 - England's burning...

Well, of course, we all remember the Style Decade! The glitzy 1980s! Yuppies! Docklands developments! Big Bang! The Credit Boom! Big hair and shoulder pads!

Ho, ho, weren't they up themselves, mateyboots?

Well, actually, one of the things that fascinates me the most about the 1980s is what a turbulent and contrasting decade it was, and nothing speaks louder about that than the good old tabloid newspapers of the era, those we propped up against the Daddy's Sauce bottle as we read and gronffed down our egg and chips early in the decade, or against the bottle of fancy salad dressing as we read and gronffed down our beautifully prepared Nouvelle Cuisine later on.

Let's continue to trawl through some early 1980s tabloid snippets... no yuppies. No mobile phones. Three TV channels and Top of The Pops on Thursday nights...

In my street, none of the school leavers stayed on to sixth form or had the remotest desire to attend university. Oh no, we wanted out of school, and that was the way it had been for us, the lower working classes, the great unwashed, forever. During the 1980s, this would begin to change, but when I left school it certainly wasn't the case. Unemployment had been a problem for years, and with Thatcher focusing on inflation, the number of jobless folk was accelerating through the roof in the early 1980s. But we poor sods had no thought of "staying on" - and it would not have been financially viable for parents round my district anyway.

No yuppies in the early 1980s, no credit boom... riots, royals, CB radio, New Romantics, Space Invaders, and Rubik's Cube were the new trends popping one by one onto the scene.

One writer referred to "The Swinging Sixties And Savage Seventies". As the 1980s got underway, I wondered if they would be remembered as "The Aggro Eighties"? Actually, there was a lot of aggro THROUGHOUT the 1980s, so perhaps it's a worthy title, but so much else happened in that ten years that there are many others!

Anyway, sit back and continue (hopefully) to enjoy this visit to 1980 and 1981, via the Daily Mirror...

1981 - "There's Going To Be A Rumble Tonight"...The riots... in 1980, there was some trouble, centred around racial tensions, a youth leader commented he'd seen it coming for fifteen years or so. In 1981, inner cities burned and shops were plundered as trouble makers, opportunists, political activists and bored youths joined in.

July 9, 1981:

Hours before the latest explosion of mob violence in North London, the word was passed around: "There's going to be a rumble tonight!"

The news spread rapidly through local pubs, youth clubs and even school playgrounds.

It resulted in a crowd of around 400 youths converging on Wood Green and turning it into a battlefield of looting and rioting.

Yesterday police, community leaders and shopkeepers - who were robbed of thousands of punds' worth of goods - were in no doubt that the mob was well organised.

More than six hours before the eruption, the Daily Mirror was warned that trouble was about to break out.

A man, who refused to give his name, phoned the Mirror to say: "There will be trouble in Wood Green High Road tonight."

The caller explained that he had overheard a group of youths in a North London pub boasting that they were going to "take on the police".

At about the same time, police themselves heard about the impending violence.

This was revealed yesterday to local police Commander Jim Dickenson.

He said: "It was obviously organised by somebody.

"You don't get hundreds of people massing in one place by coincidence."

Haringey Council leader Robin Young also got a tip-off hours before.

He said: "Undoubtedly it was all pre-arranged. The word went round that there was going to be a rumpus."

Youths in orgy of plunder

Moss Side

Shopkeepers were last night counting the cost of mob violence which exploded in Moss Side, Manchester, early yesterday.

Mobs of youths threw petrol bombs, smashed windows and looted shops, leaving a trail of damage estimated at £300,000.

They stoned fireman who were forced to retreat and watch helplessly as two shops were gutted...

In Liverpool, 25 people - the youngest aged eleven - appeared in court following the Toxteth riots.

They were charged with offences ranging from assaults on police to criminal damage. Most of the adults charged were remanded in custody.

Meanwhile, the BBC was apparently giving instructions on Radio 2 on how to make a Molotov cocktail. Good grief!

Wednesday, July 8, 1981: 

A bomb boob on JY show

The BBC blundered yesterday by broadcasting how to make a petrol bomb.

BBC community relations correspondent John Clare, who has been covering the Liverpool riots, described the ingredients of a Molotov cocktail on Jimmy Young's Radio 2 show.

The BBC received a number of complaints and Jimmy made an apology later in his show.

On the same day, a letter published in the Mirror's Public Opinion section asked an interesting question...

As I lived in Toxteth until about two years ago, the riots there are less of a surprise to me than most. It was obvious that the levels of social deprivation I witnessed could not continue without some reaction sooner or later.

I wonder, though, why riots have only broken out now under a Tory Government.

Ted Heath and the Left Wing Mirror were well and truly on Thatcher's case, and Lady Di caused shock amongst traditionalists as Royal Wedding fever raged...

 Thursday, July 2, 1981:

Lady Diana Spencer will NOT promise to obey Charles when they marry on July 29.

She will pledge herself only to "love him, comfort him, honour and keep him, in sickness and in health" at the ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral.

Her decision after talks with Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, breaks with the tradition followed by Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Anne.

But it delighted women's libbers like Nell Noell of the Women's Rights Movement.

But Lady Di didn't go far enough for Nell, who said: "I hope she will avoid the humiliation of using her husband's name.

"She should stick to name she was born with and not agree to be called Princess Charles."

Flippin' 'eck! The times were changing, however, quite frankly I couldn't have cared less about the Royal Wedding - and as for Feminism - YUCK! - one-sided, cherry-picked lies aimed at vilifying one half of the human race. Men. I'm in total agreement with Karen Straughan. But what's that at the bottom of the front page? The topless Mary Poppins? Good grief! SURELY NOT?!!!

Eeeek!

Thursday, July 2, 1981:

AT LAST.. this is the moment when sugary British star Julie Andrews loses all her inhibitions and Mary Poppins finally pops out.

Julie plays a fading Mary Poppins-type actress in her new film, SOB, the story of the machinations of the Hollywood film moguls.

She is called on to go topless in a movie to save the studio from going bust.

It's quite a wrench for the poor girl, but finally she is convinced that fans will pack the box offices if she is seen in the bare flesh.

There is another eye-popping scene where she bares her bottom for a quack doctor to inject her with a muscle-relaxant drug so she can pluck up courage to peel off for the cameras.

What did Julie think of her part in the film, directed by husband Blake Edwards? "It gave me quite a kick," she said.

That nice Mary Poppins certainly wouldn't have approved.

I was so shocked, I nearly passed me fags round. 

In other news... Ronald Reagan was elected President of the USA in November 1980. He was shot in 1981, but survived.

Oh well, we'll watch Wimbledon! In 1981, Wimbledon was a bastion of tradition, a far more staid, and in fact downright posh, affair than it is today. The perfect retreat from the stresses of the highly modern early 1980s world.

Oh yeah?!!!!

"You CANNOT be serious!" John McEnroe was making waves as he dragged Wimbledon out of the highly polite "More Tea Vicar?" 1930s and into the brash, "In-Yer-Face" 1980s....

Lady Diana Spencer watched at Wimbledon yesterday as tennis superbrat John McEnroe smashed his way into the final with a volley of abuse.

Lady Diana, a keen tennis fan, was a surprise visitor to Wimbledon. She was given a standard ovation when she arrived in the Royal box.

Then the 14,000-strong crowd watched in amazement as McEnroe made thirteen loud comments to the umpire and shouted obscenities at spectators.

The behaviour on court brought a public warning and penalty point with the possibility of a £5,000 fine.

And twenty minutes after his semi-final victory, over Australia's Rod Frawley, the fiery American was still at it. 

He stormed out of a press conference after calling newsmen "liars" and "trash".

McEnroe's first-set public warning for unsportsmanlike behaviour came when he suddenly bellowed: "I hate umpires. I get screwed by them in this place."

In the final set he lost a penalty point for shouting, "You are a disgrace to mankind."  The umpire took it as an insult, but McEnroe later said he had been talking to himself.

At the press conference McEnroe's first explosion came when he was asked whether the return to New York of his girlfriend, Stacy Margolin, meant they had split up.

The 22-year-old New Yorker shouted: "People like you make me sick. It is none of your business in the first place and the answer is no."

He went on: "You guys are sh*t and trash and I want you to quote me on that."

During McEnroe's outburst Lady Diana's name was mentioned. He suddenly paused and said: "She's a terrific person."

Before sweeping out of the room McEnroe told reporters: "I don't want to waste time on low people like you."

The uproar continued after the star's exit when a fight broke out between two newsmen - a Britain and an American - which sent chairs and microphones flying.

 Phew, feel quite exhausted after this little trip back... Time to go and have a cuppa and a quick play with my ZX 80, I think. More soon...

Charles And Diana, 1981: Video 2000 - The Best Choice For The Royal Wedding...

July 29, 1981, saw Lady Diana Spencer marry HRH Prince Charles, and what a day it was. The wedding was a glorious spectacle of pomp and ceremony - and just look at the train on Diana's dress!

1981 was a highly memorable year, with the Royal Wedding, the Rubik's Cube craze, illegal CB radio usage going into overdrive before legalisation in November, and the inner city riots which rocked England.

It's a year I'll never forget - and it seems almost impossible to accept that it is now thirty years ago. Yes, THIRTY!!!

And we have another Royal Wedding in the offing for 2011.

Were you one of those glued to the Royal Wedding on the telly back in 1981? Did you video it? If so you were lucky because not many people had a VCR in 1981. 5% of the population in 1980 were lucky enough, and the Royal Wedding did cause a small leap in sales and rentals of VCRs, but I didn't know anybody that had one. They were very uncommon in 1981.

By early 1985 the figure stood at 25%.

Still, some were lucky enough to be able to use this uncommon device on that very uncommon occasion.

I was fascinated to find the ad below in the Daily Mirror, July 13, 1981, for Video 2000.

Video WHAT?!!! you splutter.

Well, for a time in the early 1980s, Video 2000 was a serious competitor for VHS...

THE PERFECT MATCH. THE PERFECT REPLAY.

Some souvenirs of the royal wedding will be more authentic than others, like the Video 2000 cassette. Philips have spent six years developing the only cassette that will record the whole event. It's all part of the new Video 2000 system.

THE ONLY VIDEO CASSETTE THAT CAN GO THE DISTANCE

No ordinary video cassette can contain all the emotion of a royal wedding.

Especially when proposed TV coverage is 7 hours long.

The unique Video 2000 cassette will record up to eight hours, because it simply flips over like an audio cassette.

Hour for hour it is one of the cheapest forms of video recording around. It leaves the others waiting at the church.

THE MOST ACCURATE PICTURE EVER

To improve your video picture Philips have invented a totally new tracking system: Dynamic Track Following. It actually lays down a pilot signal during recording.

On playback the video heads continually compare the video track with this original pilot. The result is the most accurate picture ever.

Video 2000 is so accurate that it needs no tracking control - the knob other video users have to twiddle when playing a tape recorded on another machine.

Your video 2000 machine will play any Video 2000 cassette perfectly. And that goes for pre-recorded cassettes too.

A ROSY FUTURE

Video 2000 is here to stay. It has been adopted by over twenty major European brands. Why not see the Philips VR2020 recorder at your Philips Video dealer. It will handle July 29th royally.

Philips Video. Simply years ahead.

VIDEO 2000. If you've been waiting for Video, it's arrived.

Daily Mirror, July 30, 1981:

There is a glowing moment every bride remembers. When she steps into the sunlight for the first time - as a wife.

For Lady Diana Spencer it was something more. She walked into St Paul's Cathedral as the daughter of an earl. She walked out as the next Queen.

How certain things seemed back then. And what a day of joyful optimism the twenty-ninth of July, 1981, was - even for the vast majority of us - those without video recorders!

1980 And 1981: Prince Charles And Lady Diana Spencer - How It All Began...

We'd never even heard of Lady Diana Spencer at the start of 1980. But by the end of that year she was the focus of intense public and media interest. Why? Well, basically, she was seeing Prince Charles and the question was: would she become his wife?

Prince Charles had first come to view Lady Diana in a "romantic" light in the summer of 1980, and that type of thing didn't remain secret for long.

The popular press went overboard. The shy young aristocrat, who worked in a very exclusive kindergarten, was the subject of thousands upon thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. No detail of her life, no matter how tiny, was left unexamined.

And when the popular press was desperate, well, they could always print stuff like this: Daily Mirror, November 15, 1980:

JUST THE TICKET

Lady Di is booked for parking... and the Mirror told you so

It was her boyfriend's 32nd birthday... The day some said would end with the announcement of a royal engagement. But as the gifts poured in for birthday boy Prince Charles, what did Lady Diana Spencer receive? A parking ticket.

Of course, she could have saved herself the £6 fine if she had checked her own birthday stars in yesterday's Mirror. Under the sign of Cancer, astrologer June Penn wrote: "There's danger of a parking ticket or a small fine, so be careful. Some of you will be asked to an anniversary or other celebration." Well, she got the parking ticket. The party was to follow later.

The unwelcome sticker was clipped to the windscreen of 19-year-old Lady Di's blue Renault 5. A traffic warden had spotted it parked on a yellow line just around the corner from her £100,000 Chelsea flat. Of Lady Diana herself there was no sign.

One of the three girls with whom she shares her first-floor mansion flat said: "Diana went out early this morning - before 7 o'clock." Had Lady Diana been invited to a birthday party at Sandringham? The flatmate said: "I don't know where she went or how she intends to spend the day."

A famous sunny day picture of Lady Diana.

The country waited in breathless anticipation. Was an engagement about to be announced? And what was Lady Di like? Daily Mirror, November 19, 1980:

The little school where Lady Diana Spencer spends her working day is not much to look at. It is just a modest church hall and there's a slightly out-of-tune piano to the right of the stage, a hint of dust about and lots of happy noise when the three to five-year-olds crash in through the swing doors.

Assistant teacher "Miss Diana" - as the children call her - loves every living, brawling "Please-may-I-go-to-the-lavatory," and "Jessica's-just-hit-me" moment.

The privileged kindergarten - £150 per term - includes such sprigs as Harold MacMillan's great-grandson, Agriculture Minister Peter Walker's little boy, plus a clutch of merchant bankers' off-spring.

The school, patriotically and simply named Young England, sits opposite Pimlico School, where the working-class children thunder out, pausing occasionally to thumb their noses or make rude noises at the nannies and the slumbering Bentleys lined up outside the tiny place opposite.

Miss Diana - the girl almost everyone thinks will perch on the Throne next to King Charles III - takes it all very easily. She is a good, affectionate teacher, and one liked and respected by even the occasional anarchic little Tory cabinet minister in training. "Come along, Elizabeth," she will admonish gently, "You're hanging behind." Or "Please, James, don't do THAT! It's not very nice, is it?"

Having delivered such mild rebukes, she will come out with her natural trademark - a brilliant blush.

Lady Diana Spencer may well blush in front of parents and children alike, but during the last few weeks she has demonstrated a remarkably cool and mature approach to the no-holds-barred degree of personal publicity to which she has been subjected...

Now Prince Charles has come out with a potentially significant statement. While week-ending at Sandringham, where Lady Diana was a house-guest, he told a small congregation of the world's press: "I know you were all expecting some news on Friday (his 32nd birthday) and I know you were disappointed. I can promise you that you will all be told soon enough"...

On paper, of course, she would appear to be the ideal girl. Both sides of her family are highly aristocratic - including four direct links to King Charles II and one to King James II. Her father, the 8th Earl Spencer (the family name is Althorp and is pronounced Althrup in that perverse way the upper-class English have of saying things differently) is directly related to the Churchill family...

Meeting her one would assume that she was just another quiet, rather unsophisticated, upper-class girl one often meets at smartish London parties. Very pretty eyes, not a great conversationalist, a trifle nervous, seemingly cool - and (best indication of her character, perhaps) a great laugher. She can look intensely serious one moment - then if someone cracks even a mild joke her face lights up like a beacon of laughter and joy.

Additionally pleasing is her voice. It is not one of those braying, high-pitched, nasal, horsey, pinched howls so typical of that Sloane Ranger set who inhabit London, complete with scarves knotted precisely on their chins and out-of-fashion Gucci shoes clanking away with enthusiasm. She is quietly spoken, not particularly posh even. It is a pleasant, even classless accent. It is certainly not in the Princess Anne league.

She is something of a domestic fusspot. One of the things she apparently cannot stand is washing up that has not been done. Indeed, she is even known to rush off into the kitchen and do the washing up while a party is going on...

It had finally happened, or so it was reported in some newspapers, just before Christmas 1980: a romantic proposal of marriage from Prince Charles to Lady Diana in the vegetable patch near the farmhouse of his two close friends, Lt. Col. Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles. And in early 1981, it was reported, Lady Di had disappeared from the scene to consider the proposal.

From the Daily Mirror, February 17, 1981:

Lady Diana Spencer's vanishing act was explained yesterday.

She had gone away to decide: Shall I marry Prince Charles?

Friends believe that the couple have been asked for a make-or-break decision.

A source close to the Royal Family said: "Lady Diana had to get away from all the pressure and think."

That pressure has been fiercely on Lady Di since Christmas. All sides, including her own family, have urged her to make a statement.

She is believed to have told the Royal Family that she needs time on her own, relaxing in the sun, to finally make up her mind...

And from inside the Daily Mirror, February 17, 1981:

Prince Charles proposed to Lady Diana Spencer just before Christmas - in the vegetable patch outside the farmhouse of his close and trusted friends, Lt. Col. Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles.

On the day in question Charles had been out hunting with Andrew and Camilla Parker-Bowles near their home at Allington, near Chippenham, Wilts.

Now it was early evening on a clear, beautiful winter day. Prince Charles and Lady Diana were holding hands. Charles, Lady Diana has told friends, seemed "strangely stifled."

Then he asked her: "If I were to ask you, do you think it would be possible?"

Lady Diana has since told friends: "I immediately felt the immense absurdity of the situation and couldn't help giggling. I still think the situation is absurd, but I just don't giggle anymore"...

From the Sun, February 25, 1981:

MY SHY DI

Charles presents his bride-to-be

The look of love is there for the world to see... as Prince Charles presents the girl he will marry. Lady Diana Spencer, 19, and the 32-year-old heir to the throne stepped out together in the grounds of Buckingham Palace yesterday - just hours after their engagement was announced.

Shy Di smiled and blushed as she displayed her dazzling engagement ring - an oval sapphire surrounded by 14 diamonds in 18 carat white gold. And there was no disguising her love for the Prince as she looked up at him and said: "I think I coped all right."

The account of the marriage proposal is different here - we move from Camilla Parker-Bowles' vegetable patch just before Christmas 1980, to Charles' private quarters at Buckingham Palace in early 1981:

Delighted Prince Charles revealed last night how he popped the question to Lady Diana over a romantic dinner.

He asked her to be his bride three weeks ago as they ate in his private quarters in Buckingham Palace.

The anxious heir deliberately timed the proposal to fall just before Lady Diana was due to fly to Australia for a holiday.

He explained: "I wanted to give her a chance to think about it - to think if it was all going to be too awful."

But Lady Diana settled the matter there and then.

And she chipped in yesterday: "I never had any doubts about it."

The paper further reported that the Royal romance had begun in July 1980, and that Diana would live at Clarence House, home of the Queen Mother, until the wedding.

The Sun's centre page spread on the same day:

Lady Diana Spencer, the English rose who has captured Prince Charles' heart, was born to be a queen.

From babyhood she has known the ways of royalty - the protocol, the courtesies and the taboos, as well as the over-riding responsibility of public duty and discretion.

The nation has fallen in love, too, with the beautiful strawberry blonde whose blushes are so endearing.

Shy Di, as she is known to close friends, has the pedigree of one of England's great families - and something about her of the Queen Mother's aura.

She is witty, well bred, friendly and unsophisticated, and she adores children. Above all, she is well liked by the Queen.

To the Royal Family she was really the girl next door.

She was christened at Sandringham and was brought up in rambling Park House on the royal estate.

As a child Lady Diana, with her two elder sisters, joined the royal children at the same birthday parties and shared the same friends .

And the Spencer children were invited on regular visits to Windsor Castle and Balmoral.

But Diana's playmates were the younger princes, Andrew and Edward. With a 13-year age difference, Charles treated her as a sort of kid sister...

The romance did not start until last autumn, shortly after her 19th birthday.

The couple spent a weekend together at Balmoral. She watched Charles fish for salmon.

Diana was barely back in her London flat when the telephone rang. It was Charles. Flowers followed and the message was believed to be signed "with love".

In the run-up to the great event, Royal Wedding fever struck - Charles and Di appeared on a huge variety of items, including clocks, trays, tea cups and a very special Rubik's Cube, featuring images of them both and the union flag...

I always remember 1981 as being the summer of the three R's - Royals, Rubik's and...

... Riots - the Sun, July 6, 1981.

And here we have a lovely book about the Royal Wedding. Oh, I'm sorry - it's Not - Not The Nine O'Clock News, of course, the brilliant BBC TV show giving its own unique view of events in book form. Rowan Atkinson takes Prince Charles' place for the cover pic.

On 29 July, Charles and Diana were married...

Daily Mirror, July 30, 1981:

There is a glowing moment every bride remembers. When she steps into the sunlight for the first time - as a wife.

For Lady Diana Spencer it was something more. She walked into St Paul's Cathedral as the daughter of an earl. She walked out as the next Queen.

How certain things seemed back then. And what a day of joyful optimism the twenty-ninth of July, 1981, was.