Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 529
Diana, Princess of Wales
Hello Everyone
Do you recognize the person in the photograph?
She was the mother of Princes William and Harry.
You may not be old enough to remember her. You may not realize how famous she was in her lifetime.
When she became engaged to Prince Charles, she attracted a lot of media attention.
That meant television and newspapers at the time. lf you ever walked past a newsstand at any time, there was always at least one magazine or newspaper there with a photograph of her on its front cover.
Her picture sold copies.
She was always in the news for the last 20 years of her life; and beyond.
The media could never get enough of her.
Prince Charles had got to the age of 32 and was still not married. He was going to be the next monarch and he needed someone to be his wife and queen. He needed children to be his heirs.
The Royal Family and the country were hoping that he would get married.
On 29th July 1981, Charles married Diana Spencer in St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. There were great celebrations.
A lot of people said that their grandmothers had manoeuvred the couple towards each other to match-make the union.
The wedding was watched by 750 million television viewers worldwide. A huge number of souvenirs were sold.
William was born just less than a year later, and Harry was to follow a few years after that.
People had warned Charles that it was unlucky to have a wedding in that church and he should follow tradition and hold his royal wedding in Westminster Abbey. He disagreed.
The route from St Paul’s to Buckingham Palace was much longer and gave the public plenty of opportunity to view the newly married couple as they rode in an open-top, horse-drawn carriage. Flags lined the streets.
The marriage was not to last. Sometimes Diana was very unhappy, and the family were unhappy with her being unhappy.
Diana was only 19 years old when she got married, and a lot of people said that the couple did not have enough in common. They liked different things and they had different interests and hobbies. Besides this, Charles also had a friend that he still really liked from before he was married. He later married her.
After the royal wedding of 1981, in no time at all, ‘Dimania’ took off.
The royal couple attracted enthusiastic crowds wherever they travelled to around the world.
Diana’s photograph was everywhere.
Everything she did attracted media attention and many girls copied Diana’s hairstyle and clothes style.
She was a trendsetter. She was tall and wore fashion well.
Later in her life, she sold off a lot of her famous and glamorous dresses that were very fitting for a princess to wear at an auction in New York to raise money for charity. She opted for a simpler way of dressing as she forged a new life for herself as a single woman outside the Royal Family.
The sale was Prince William’s idea.
The auction took place on 25th June 1997 and raised £3.5 million for charity.
Some of her dresses were put on display in Kensington Palace for visitors to see.
As Diana grew older, she changed from being very shy to being more confident. She connected well with people and did a lot to support charities and people who were ill and disadvantaged.
Charles and Diana separated in 1992. Diana was no longer called Her Royal Highness. But people still called her the ‘people’s princess’ because they were so fond of her. They thought she was very warm-hearted and compassionate.
She had transformed the way royalty interacted with people beyond the royal circle. She went out of her way to reach out to the public. She touched people and hugged children in a way that had not been seen before by people in her position.
She looked after her own children in a very ‘hands-on’ way that had not been traditionally the habit of royal mothers who had left a lot of the work of child rearing to nannies, and Diana became very close to her two sons.
Those that knew her said that she championed those in society who were poor or ill or rejected because she had felt side-lined herself in life, and identified with them; she knew how they felt. She had often felt lonely.
Diana had been brought up in an unhappy home. She was from an aristocratic family. They had a large house, land and wealth, but her parents had separated and Diana’s mother left her when she was young.
When Diana joined the Royal Family, she felt sometimes that she had not had the support she needed in her new life and she felt overwhelmed with the attention she was receiving from the media.
She became unhappy and the marriage began to break down.
Reporters and photographers continued to chase her constantly.
She knew she could take the attention that was on her and draw it towards people who needed it.
Although she became involved with many good causes and used her privilege and position, she always insisted that she was a humanitarian (that meant she cared about people) rather than a political figure.
ln 1995, she was named humanitarian of the year.
Diana liked to laugh and joke with people to put them at their ease. She was famous for having kind words for people and very soft, easy way of connecting with people that earned her affection and respect here and abroad.
At times, when she was happy, Diana had a glow about her that people often emit (give out) when they are the centre of attention. She photographed well. People said that the camera loved her.
One of her greatest lifetime achievements was her support of an anti-landmine campaign. She travelled around the world drawing attention to it in a way that only she could. She took her media attention with her. She influenced the opinion of politicians and eventually The Ottawa Agreement, an international treaty signed in 1997, banned the use of anti-personnel landmines worldwide. She did not live to see this happen.
Landmines claimed the lives or dreadfully injured many people who were civilians (not soldiers fighting a war) around the world. Unfortunately, the work of clearing these landmines still needs to continue.
The group that caused the treaty to be signed was to go on the win the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.
ln 1996, the royal divorce was finalized and a year later it appeared that Diana had a new boyfriend called Dodi. She went on holiday with him on a very large yacht in the Mediterranean. People said that she was attracted to the warm family life that he lived in.
ln 1997, after cutting the holiday short, the couple headed for Paris. Dodi had business there he needed to attend to.
The couple had been in the Ritz Hotel in Paris, but photographers had crowded outside hoping to get photographs that they could sell for a lot of money.
The couple slipped out of the hotel deciding to head for Dodi’s apartment. They were spotted and chased at high speed. Diana usually wore a seat belt, but it was reported afterwards that the belt had jammed and was unusable.
When the car crashed into a pillar inside a road tunnel, Diana was mortally injured.
She died in the early hours of 31st August 1997.
Prince Charles flew to Paris to accompany her body back to England.
People laid mountains of flowers in tribute outside the gates of the palaces in London.
The whole world was in absolute shock. They could not believe what had happened. Diana was so young. She was only 36 years old.
Her funeral was 7 days later.
Huge crowds lined the streets of London and filled the parks. There was a massive public outpouring of grief.
Diana was buried on a peaceful island in the middle of a lake on a private family estate.
Nearby is a plaque on which is written:-
Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society lt is a goal and an essential part of my life A kind of destiny Whoever is in distress can call on me l will come running wherever they are.
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: lf Cinderella’s shoes fitted her, why did one of them fall off?
Bill: Well, they didn’t have any dating agencies in those days, did they!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Miss Pringle took her class for a nature ramble in the Rocky Bay Woods. There are more paths to walk along and clearings to walk across after a huge group of volunteers worked very hard to clear away a lot of the bramble, bracken and other undergrowth that had taken over the forest floor. I was telling you about our monumental efforts on the news desk three weeks ago.
Miss Pringle thought it would be lovely to wander through the woods and take note of the wildlife and plants the children saw.
But – oh dear! They got lost. Every path seemed to look the same and when they got inside the woods they could not find their way back out again. In some ways every path looked the same and in some ways nothing looked familiar. One reason they had a problem is because you travel though woods in one direction but you see everything from a different angle when you come back along the same path when you come back out again – and so everything then looks different.
Some of the children even began to panic. They were beginning to think that they would never see their homes again! The Rocky Bay Woods are not a vast tract of wilderness. That was never going to happen. But when you are very little, big woods can sometimes seem very scary.
Luckily, Miss Pringle kept her head and soon got her class out of trouble. She heard the river in the distance, headed towards it; then she and her class walked down the river bank in the direction of the current. When they got to Auntie Alice’s cottage at the edge of the wood it was very easy to find the lane back to town.
But the huge adventure, or ordeal, depending on how you look at it, gave Miss Pringle an idea and she asked me if I would help. In no time at all, I was on the job.
I made a map of the woods with all its paths and glades on a big piece of paper using my superior mapmaking skills – well I drew a big picture anyway, and Miss Pringle worked with her class to name the parts of the woods. The children thought up lots of great names and then it was over to me again to make signs made out of wood to put up inside the wood. The signs were not bright colours like road signs, just wooden plaques we could nail up onto large trees or onto wooden posts driven into the ground.
There were lots of pretty and lovely names like Bluebell Grove, Blossom Bank, Squirrels’ Path and Badgers’ Glade.
From now on, anyone going into the woods can see the signs with names on them and know how to come back out of the woods the same way they went in – and they won’t need to panic.
I think Miss Pringle had a good idea and I was glad to give her help. But I can tell you that the animals in the wood won’t need to use our signs, they already know their way around.
Do you know in which continent you would find these rivers?
- Yangtze
- Rhine
- Mississippi
- Amazon
- Rhone
- Seine
- Rio Grande
- Thames
Mississippi steam boat
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Quick Quiz
Can you complete these idioms and say what they mean?
- marry in haste, repent at l _ _ _ _ _ _
- love and marriage go together like a horse and c _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- he is married to his j _ _
- l hear wedding b _ _ _ _
- my other h _ _ _
- to fall head over h _ _ _ _
- pop the q _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- tie the k _ _ _
- get h _ _ _ _ _ _
- to walk down the a _ _ _ _
- a soul m _ _ _
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A PATTERNED DOLL BLANKET
This is an interesting way to make a square for a blanket.
You can make as many as you need to make a blanket of any size for a doll’s bed, cot or pram or even for a baby.
You can make your squares all the same colour. You can make a blanket with two colours or three or many colours to make it look really jazzy. But you must use yarns of the same thickness otherwise the squares will not fit together well.
If you want to make a blanket for your own bed, it will take a very long time – be prepared!
You could make a blanket with a mixture of plain bordered squares and some with the added texture amongst them randomly or in an ordered pattern. The pattern could be in squares or diagonals. Make a plan of your design before you start so that you know how many of each square you need to make – in terms of colour and pattern.
BLANKET SQUARE WITH PLAIN INNER PANEL
Using 4mm knitting needles and yellow dk yarn cast on 24 stitches
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Slip 1, knit to end
Slip 1, knit 3, purl 16, knit 4
Repeat the last 2 rows 11 times
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
BLANKET SQUARE WITH TEXTURED INNER PANEL
Using 4mm knitting needles and yellow dk yarn cast on 24 stitches
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
PATTERN
Slip 1, knit 3 (knit 2, purl 2) repeat the last 4 stitches 3 times, knit 4
Repeat the last row once
Slip 1, knit 3 (purl 2, knit 2) repeat the last 4 stitches 3 times, knit 4
Repeat the last row once
Repeat this 4 row pattern 6 times
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Answers to the News Desk Quiz
- Yangtze – Asia
- Rhine – Europe
- Mississippi – North America
- Amazon – South America
- Rhone – Europe
- Seine – Europe
- Rio Grande – North America
- Thames – Europe
Quick Quiz Answers
- marry in haste, repent at leisure – if you don’t know someone well before you get married the marriage may well go wrong
- love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage – if you are in love, marriage is a good option for you
- he is married to his job – his career is his main focus in life
- l hear wedding bells – it looks to me that they will get married
- my other half – my partner complements me, l feel very attached to this person
- to fall head over heels – to fall deeply in love
- pop the question – ask someone to marry you
- tie the knot – get married
- get hitched – get married
- to walk down the aisle – get married
- a soul mate – someone you have a deep love for and get on really well with
