The D word

I have no idea why I do it. There is no explanation for the fact that I’ve ended up with these things. Some time ago I spotted a book about the late Princess of Wales in a charity shop and bought it. Since then I’ve bought a few more, along with a couple of thimbles on Ebay though I think the thimbles had more to do with their kitsch appeal than sympathy. For some reason I have taken more interest in Diana since her death than I did when she was alive.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the books that were produced about her in the 1980’s have begun to crop up for sale amongst the bric-a-brac, possibly because someone has moved and decided to let go of a collection or because there has been a death. It is likely to be the latter because so many of her fans were loyal to the last.

Looking through those books it is impossible not to feel sad that the behaviour most of us took to be a coy shyness was in truth indicative of a fear and nervousness we could not have begun to imagine. How mean some of the comments made about her then seem now, with the benefit of hindsight. I can’t help wondering how she felt, at an age where young women are particularly self conscious about their appearance, to have all that aimed at her when she was coming to terms with such a strange new life. Regarded as one of the most elegant women of 1981 she was then voted one of The Ten Worst Dressed of 1982.

From what she said to those who recorded her thoughts, she could never really understand why she had such a potent effect on some of the men around her. I saw this for myself when a teacher at the school I attended at the time came back from a lunch break having seen her. The tough, blunt Scot was useless for the rest of the day because she had smiled at him.

Of course her daughter-in-law to be, the girl she never had the chance to meet, has all that ahead of her and the strange thing is that there has a been a lapse of time large enough for many to forget that the same things are being said all over again. That Kate is a style icon, that she is bound to encourage new interest in the British fashion industry, that she will set trends rather than follow them.

“It was really on the day that she became engaged to the Prince of Wales that she became a leader of fashion. Copies of the magnificent sapphire and diamond engagement ring were very soon on sale for anything from a few pounds to a few thousand pounds, depending on whether they were made of coloured glass or the real thing. Of course the soft blue suit, which became the perfect foil for the engagement ring, was copied everywhere too, and the colour of the season became ‘Lady Diana Blue.‘” “Princess, Leader of Fashion“, Martina Shaw

A few weeks ago I was walking behind someone who looked so much like Kate because of her clothes and hair, and I realise now that what she has in common with Diana is her ordinariness. Diana set a trend for pie crust blouses and that bobbed hairstyle because the media transmitted her look (worn by hundreds of women in central London) to thousands elsewhere. The woman I was following by chance wore her hair long, her raincoat belted in at the waist and her long boots kitten heeled because so many others of her generation do. And now even more do simply because she does.

How easily the lessons of Diana’s trials at the hands of the media have been forgotten. Kate and her family have already suffered the ignominy of being scrutinised and then criticised when her relationship with William broke down briefly. The footage of her walking quickly through a horde of photographers in the early days, head down and hunted, brought back many queasy memories of Diana and her ordeal, both before and after her marriage.

Few are willing to say it out loud, that Kate will inevitably be seen through the filter that her mother-in-law’s experience created. Every British royal bride will be for the foreseeable future. Diana has slept on her island at Althorp for over a decade now and she isn’t coming back but her influence is as powerful as if she had risen from the dead. The special but intangible wedding gift she has given both her boys is contact and experience of the real world. Their experience of normality may still be a long way off from that of the man who waves at them as they drive past today but they are so much closer to it than their father and his siblings ever were.

I hope that this gift will give the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton a fighting chance. I wish them a long, happy and drama free life, full of all the things that a certain blonde, whose memorabilia I will probably continue to accumulate, was denied.

Royal Wedding Charity Fund
Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund

Made in China 2: Something to remind you

Just in case you’ve been on Mars, two major events are on the horizon that will be especially significant for Londoners.

The first is a royal wedding, an occasion when at least two of those involved will probably wish they could just get on with it without all the attention. The second is the 2012 Olympics, an occasion where all of those concerned hope for lots of the right kind of attention (a sports festival free of corruption/scandal/performance enhancing drugs - don‘t hold your breath).

What they have in common is that they will provide opportunities for a great many people to make an awful lot of money, in some cases by selling something truly awful.

Having perused gift stalls in the stifling heat myself, I can understand why someone saw a certain item and thought of me. They were thirsty, their feet hurt and they felt they had to get me something. Besides, everything looks terrific in strong sunlight. Bad taste isn‘t really why I‘m raising this issue, if someone cares enough to buy me a gift on their holiday I should be grateful for it. What winds me up is how often I turn these things over and see the words “Made in China” on the back.

One of the ugliest gifts to grace our home was a nightlight holder from Lanzarote, nasty to handle and impossible to clean because it was so rough, a humorous reminder of the black volcanic landscape of the island. It was horrible but at least it had the virtue of being made in the place that it represented! Its maker is holding their own against an onslaught of foreign made souvenirs.

If, as I do, you live near a big city that attracts tourists, take a look at what’s on sale to those who spend their hard earned money in your country. Take a long hard look at the things that some retailers have chosen to represent you, your culture, your home. Remember, they’ll see them and they’ll think of you.

Walking past a shop in a local station overflowing with items aimed at visitors, I’ve always wondered where the small plastic Union flag purses were made. So in the interests of research I bought one and found that it was, of course, made in China.

I doubt if those buying these purses really give a damn where they were made, they probably just want something cheap, but I’m beginning to wish that they did. “Souvenir” is a French word meaning “to remember”. If the people who buy these things want something to remind them of the time they spent in the UK I would rather it was actually made here and reflected the good design we are capable of, however cheap the item.

Those plastic purses are made by a British company and according to their website they design what they sell. At one time they also made their products in the UK. All sorts of reasons get cited for the transfer of production abroad by companies like this. Top of the list is that it is often cheaper to manufacture goods outside the UK. Lower costs, fewer regulations, quicker production and supply of short runs all figure in the reasoning behind a move abroad. It makes for a wider profit margin and you could argue that, as the company is based in the UK, it’s a good thing because the profits stay here. However, lower costs means lower wages. Fewer regulations can mean poor working conditions and little or no trade union representation. Speedy supply and short runs? Pressure to work long hours in a job with little security. It also means jobs lost or never even created in the country that these souvenirs are supposed to be a reminder of.


The company responsible for the purse has also created a royal wedding range and I would be surprised if any of it has been made in the UK. They’ve used licensed photographs of the couple on their plates, mugs and magnets which means they’ve had to pay to do so. Another company has avoided this by producing a range called “Royal Wedding” which makes no specific reference to them. You’ll find it in branches of a large supermarket chain, everything from paper napkins to a replica of that sapphire engagement ring. It appears again, in miniature, as a pair of earrings, made in China. The official royal wedding range sold through the Buckingham Palace shop, is made in Stoke-on-Trent, where ceramic goods have been produced for centuries and the profits will go towards preserving the extensive Royal Collection.

I find the failure to provide British made souvenirs for a truly British event like the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton particularly frustrating because I keep being told that the UK will benefit from both it and the Olympics. It’s hard to see how we can if there are factories in China just waiting for the news of a royal engagement and capable of turning out thousands of items within days.

The Olympics should be an opportunity for the creative as well as the sporting community of a host country to profit but it seems to me that the benefits and rights of the occasion are shared out amongst corporations long before the circus hits town. The contract to supply enamel pin badges, one of the most lucrative elements of the souvenir industry for the London 2012 Olympics, was awarded to a Chinese company. Many of the twenty-six companies it beat off to win the contract were British - where did they go wrong? I contacted one company that sells enamel badges and according to the person I spoke to there is only one small business still making them in this country. The reasons they aren’t using that manufacturer? Cost and lead time. The profit made on these things is so big that even notching up thousands of air miles by flying them to the UK is no big deal.


It is the small, almost disposable items like badges that bring in the cash, the things that almost everyone can afford. Ask the person managing the shop at any stately home in the UK what the best sellers are and I guarantee that the answer will be erasers, pencils and postcards, because they regularly welcome parties of school children with pocket money budgets. It would be fantastic if all those small basic souvenirs could be made in the UK. A company called Pageantry Postcards is making the effort to produce its goods here and they are typical of the sort of company we should all be supporting. Another, at the more expensive end of the scale, is Colonial Soldier which sells hand carved figures of British soldiers alongside antiques.

I find it extraordinary that a country with such a great reputation for studio pottery does little to promote it to tourists visiting the UK and to organisations such as the London Olympics Organising Committee. Use of the Olympic brand is so tightly regulated that it is unlikely that a local potter could get away with knocking out a few mugs with “Olympics 2012” painted on them. In fact he or she wouldn’t even be allowed to paint on the words “London 2012” without the written consent of LOCOG.

In my opinion it is only legislation and official promotion which will help local artists to genuinely benefit from big events. Discussion and awareness of the issue by local legislators is long overdue. In some cases it is takes simple embarrassment to effect a change but what will it take to embarrass our politicians into changing this?

Think about what you spend your money on when you next take a holiday or mark an occasion. It isn’t just about job creation and national pride. Concerns about human and animal rights should make everyone think twice about what they take home with them. Personally I don’t want to look at something in my home and know that the person who made it is denied rights that I take for granted, nor do I want visitors to my country to believe that I’m happy that British souvenirs are made somewhere like that. It’s nothing to be proud of. There are so many gifted craftspeople and artists out there - make the effort to look for them. They might not be plastering what they make with the local flag but what they create can be just as effective a reminder of a good time.

Guggenheim Museum petition for Ai Weiwei, collaborative artist, Bird’s Nest stadium, Beijing
Olympics 2008

Make a donation to Kate and William’s favoured charities

Stand up and be counted

I’ve got to admit that it took me several days to send off the census form. For some reason I put off filling in or even looking through it, in spite of all the television and newspaper ads encouraging me to get on with it.

This is our third census at our present address. It’s one of those things that mark you out as an established couple, like replacing a saucepan or a washing machine that you bought when you first moved in together. It occurred to me that our former neighbours must have filled out at least five during the time they lived next door and that it will be the last one that another neighbour will complete as a resident of our street before she moves.

Establishing where we all are every ten years, the census of the UK’s population asks questions about employment (or unemployment), religion (a voluntary question) and the kind of home you live in, amongst many other things. Genealogists love them. Now that many are online you can find out within minutes what your great-great grandparents were up to in, for example, 1871. A tantalising absence from a census could be explained by a contemporary event such as a war. A child born a few months before one census may have died by the next one, a great aunt or uncle representing a potential branch of your family tree.

Unfortunately for those keen to know what more recent generations have been up to, the information collected by the census remains secret for a century. This rule only became a legal requirement in 1920, allowing the records for 1911 to be released three years early. Women had begun to demand the right to vote and some boycotted the census taken that year as a protest. One suffragette wrote “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper.” This comment, her personal direct action, remained a secret for almost a hundred years.

The question “Do you stay at another address for more than 30 days a year?“ tells of university for one young adult or military service for another. There must have been many households in the UK for whom the absence of one name at their address brought a sense of pride and happiness because their child had succeeded in gaining a place on a course. For others it meant pride and sadness at the loss of a family member in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The questions being asked are as good an indicator of cultural, economic and political changes as the information they bring in. I wonder what my ancestors would have made of questions about same-sex civil partnerships? The 2011 census allows for the fact that these relatively new official forms of relationship may have broken down already (“Separated but still legally in a same-sex civil partnership”; “Formerly in a same-sex civil partnership which is now dissolved”).

A great uncle of mine earned some extra cash while a student by gathering information for the 1921 census and came across a situation that revealed how some people dealt with failed marriages at the time. Calling at one house he asked for Mrs. X to which the reply was “Which One?” The head of the household was living at the same address as his wife and his new partner along with all their children. Both women referred to themselves as “Mrs. X“ to maintain a veneer of propriety at a time when it was not easy for the average person to obtain a divorce. The Divorce Act of 1969 came into force in 1971 so it may have been another ten years before the impact of the new legislation was evident in a census.

The questions that I found most difficult to answer were the one about qualifications (really confusing - I’m still not sure I picked the right option) and the one about the ethnic group I think I belong to. I wonder how many others from a partly foreign background struggle to answer that sort of question as I do. The promotion around this year’s census has emphasised its value to individuals, that it represents around £22,000 in spending. The government is trying to persuade those reluctant to complete it that it will ensure the right level of services in each area. One question asked if I help or support a neighbour or family member with age or health related needs. Another asked how I travel to work.

They seem to want to know so much and that may be what put me off getting stuck in. For the first time I found it rather intrusive. In the end it turned out that only a small part of the booklet required completion because it allowed for a household of more than two people. I got off quite lightly but I feel for anyone organising a sleepover on the same night.

“H4: Apart from everyone counted in question H2, who else is staying overnight here on Sunday 27 March? These people are counted as visitors. Remember to include children and babies.”

Some unexpected extras for the census officials.