Not quite what I was expecting...

Yesterday I found myself in Mohammed's grotto. No reason to go into the details - a phone call which I was awaiting today has yet to be received and the longer it remains silent the more I suspect that my visit to Knightsbridge was a fleeting one.

Apparently my visit overlapped with my parents, although we didn't know we had been there until the evening. My mother was being apologetic - "we wanted to do something cultural and we ended up in Harrods".

But she needn't have felt guilty. As I pointed out, al-Fayed has got his own cultural icons there. I actually went down to the 'lower ground floor' and discovered the most kitch, over-the-top tribute-display-contraption with Princess Diana's and Dodi al-Fayed's photos in them. Apparently this is al-Fayed keeping his son's memory alive. Tourists were happily snapping away.

It may not be to everyone's taste. But it looks like Harrod's basement is now on London's cultural map...