They didn't have to put up the crowd control barriers at Kensington Palace, they were already there. Rain or shine, whenever the Princess of Wales was in London, a straggle of photographers would be waiting, corralled between a metal barrier and one of the ancient walls of Kensington Palace Gardens. For a coming. For a going. For a flash of that smile, or a leg. When she did emerge, in a car or - more often than was perhaps sensible - on foot, the shouting would start and the gauntlet run.
Now the men with the cameras are on the other side of the barrier. The pavement where they used to stand is knee deep in flowers. And the photographers themselves are a different breed. The "rat pack", as the paparazzi were known in the media, are conspicuous by their absence. Not one, I was told by a photographer friend, has turned up.
But in the eyes of some who come to pay their last respects, still shocked and stunned by news they can't take in, they are all tarred with the same brush. "You're nothing but vultures," shouted one woman, tears streaming down her face. Words echoing those of Dodi al-Fayed's father, Mohammed al-Fayed, and Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer - "I always thought the press would kill her. And now they have".
Few are here just to gawp. Tourists are moved along by uniformed police, but on the whole the people waiting patiently for their turn outside the entrance to Kensington Palace and down the road that runs along Kensington Gardens towards the Albert Hall are local people carrying flowers, not cameras. Some picked from their gardens, some bought from the corner shop.
All have come to say goodbye. Silently they wait their turn and then walk alone to the edge of the ever-encroaching tide of colour, kneel, pause for a few seconds, lay down their bouquet then turn and go.
Few even bother to acknowledge the click, click click of the photographers. An unshaven youth with close cropped hair and an earring; an old lady who manages to kneel, but has to be helped to get up; a young man, gaunt and frail, with skin like stretched parchment; young girls, their blotched make-up turning their red eyes to staring, glowing embers.
"She was one of us," a 24-year-old woman told me as the queue inched its way forward. "She had been through so much and the tragedy is it seemed as if she had just started enjoying herself. I don't blame the press. You're only doing your job and I enjoyed reading about her as much as anyone. And I suppose we are all just as much to blame. It's just a vicious circle."
She would not tell me her name ("It's not important. She's the one who was important. ").
But floating on the sea of flowers were names in their hundreds, telling their own compassionate stories. "Peter and Gavin, with love and thanks"; "Sorry, Diana"; "Born a lady, Became a Princess, Died a legend" ; "Diana, your inner grace and beauty were an example to us all"; "On behalf of landmine victims throughout the world, your dedication and compassion will not be forgotten" ; "Thank you for all the good you've bought to the world" "Goodbye Diana, we will miss you." Most are not written in writing large enough to read from behind the barrier. Only one is designed for a wider audience, written in black felt tip. "A Mercedes 600 out of control? No. A remote control device. Dodi and Diana. Murdered by the British Secret Service. Murderers."
AT the front of the line a heavily built man is allowed to queue jump. Nobody minds. He is a florist and is carrying 15 bouquets. Fifty more are already being made up by his staff back at the shop. He lays them down carefully one by one, then stands quietly, head bowed. "The only time when anything approaching this happened," he tells me, "is when Freddie Mercury died. But I don't see this stopping. The flowers will run out before it does." Across the road at Marks and Spencers they already had.
At the palace end, Kensington High Street was thronged with people making their way from the tube station down to the palace gates. Inside the station classical music was being broadcast over the loudspeaker system, interspersed by the National Anthem. The usual blare of pop music that usually leaks out from every shop doorway was absent. And so were most of the customers.
The Body Shop, where Diana it seems sometimes wandered in, was empty. A CD of Mozart's 40th symphony was playing. "Her death has touched everybody," said the manageress. "You can't just shut up, but we decided to play only classical music."
Kensington had always been Diana's home patch and where she felt most comfortable. When we first learned of her existence in 1979, Lady Diana Spencer was the archetypal Sloane, complete with velvet hair band and appliqued cardigan. Her first flat, bought by her father, Earl Spencer, but shared with two other girlfriends, was in Coleherne Court, a mansion block half a mile away down the Earls Court Road from Kensington Palace.
Her first job at the Young England Kindergarten - where photographers snapped their first few frames of the girl in the seethrough skirt - was in a church hall off Sloane Square, less than a mile away. To earn a little extra she would clean her sister Sarah's flat in Elm Park Gardens. Her favourite restaurant was San Lorenzo's in Beauchamp Place, where from the earliest days Diana could always rely on the sympathetic, and discreet, ear of Mara Berni, an archetypal Italian mama.
Just down the road are the two Knightsbridge department stores that will always be associated with her : the chic but small Harvey Nichols in her life; Harrods at her death. The plaque reading "By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen Mother, drapers" above the main entrance of Harvey Nicks, as Sloanes always referred to it, had been long due an update. Their most famous and loyal patron would regularly be seen having lunch on the fifth floor, her detective seated close by. In the now famous Panorama interview, the only time when most of us had an opportunity to judge this charismatic yet complex woman for ourselves, she said, speaking of herself in the third person, "She will not go quietly". And she didn't.
Yesterday Harvey Nichols's marble and chrome interior was strangely hushed. No music. And hardly any customers.
Sellotaped to a marble entrance pillar was one red rose.