"Saudi Gaudy"
Those "monuments" are just so tacky beyond belief.
Where is the waxwork of him?
I lived in KSA for three years, and the expats used to use the term "Saudi gaudy" to describe anything overdone to the point of nausea. You know - too much gold, too much red velvet - I'm sure you get the idea. I go to London quite a lot and I have seen the "memorials" in Harrods on more than one occasion. The statues are actually quite hideous - Dodi and Diana with some bird (I'm guessing a dove) flying off between them. Then there's the stuff on the landing of the Egyptian staircase (I think I have that right). Totally tacky. And the wine glass is WAAAYYY too creepy - and of course the ring is there as well (or what is probably a good copy - I confess I don't know too much about that, but there IS a ring there in the case, which if memory serves me correctly is a pyramid!) The portraits would be nice (for whatever Al-Fayed is or isn't, that is his son, and I have to give people benefit of the doubt on that one)- if it weren't for the horrid double "D" frame that they're in. And if it WERE about his son, I would think he'd leave Diana out of it.
Guess I need to coin the phrase "Egyptian gaudy"!
I have pics and would post them if I knew how. If someone can explain or PM me how to do it, I'll get them up.
BTW, it would be difficult for anyone to convince me of anything other than that Al-Fayed engineered the whole Diana/Dodi thing from the start - not that Diana was completely blameless, because I do think she saw an opportunity to both p*ss off the BRF and make Hasnat Khan jealous. Looking back, the whole thing was a bit strange. I can remember seeing the photos at the checkout in the grocery store and thinking, what the h-e-double hockey sticks is she DOING? I had made up my mind to not even pick up a copy to flip through, because at that point the press was making me physically ill. Then I cut on the news that night before going out with some friends and I thought, huh - didn't we sort of know something catastrophic was coming? It was like she was on a breakneck course for disaster.
They announced her death that night in the bar I was in, and you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone sort of just looked around, like, WHAT? I admit, the girls I was out with and I did cry - all I could think about was her boys - not what a mess she was and not what else she may or may not have been. The three guys who were with us put their arms around our shoulders and didn't say anything. She was someone's mum. She was only a year older than my sister, and I thought about that too. We drank a toast - a bunch of us did - to William and Harry. Then the next morning I called my sister and my own mum straight away, at some god-awful hour their time.
I picked "other" in the poll - because as I aged, my opinion of her (or maybe it's best said my view of her) did change. As a kid, I thought she was perfect - the embodiment of the fairy tale. As years passed, I learned otherwise. She was no saint, no fairytale princess. I know she was manipulative (and probably emotionally immature as well as an emotional mess), vindictive, and probably impossible to get along with. But I do believe she did the best she could with what she had (mentally and emotionally), and I don't believe she was evil or out to deliberately destroy people. She knew better, but just couldn't do it alone - but she didn't know what to do to get help. What a mess; what a sad situation to live - and die - in.
I'm not in the Saint Diana camp, nor am I in the Evil Charles camp. He's a whole other thread - and Camilla is DEFINITELY another posting...
