Royal Split Hits Home With Local Britishers

Hare & The Hounds, a memorabilia shop in Thousand Oaks, is half a world away from Buckingham Palace.

But it might just as well have been across the street Wednesday when word came that Prince Charles and Princess Diana are splitting up.

Nick Walton, a vacationing Englishman, was stunned by the news. He called Prince Charles a “plonker,” the British slang for idiot , as he shook his head over the marriage that went from storybook wedding to domestic disaster.

“I didn’t think they’d do it,” said Walton, a plastics fabricator who lives near Manchester. “I thought they’d sort it out. I like Di a lot. I think Charles is a plonker. He has a beautiful wife like that, and he just doesn’t care.”

British authorities had made it official: Charles and Diana, who wed in 1981, will lead separate lives but will not divorce.

For most Ventura County residents, the report was hardly the hot topic of conversation Wednesday. But at the memorabilia shop and other spots where English people congregate, the breakup stirred quite a buzz.

At the Victoria Pub in Ventura, the only American branch of a small British restaurant chain, the British employees were well aware of Charles and Diana’s marital woes.

They expressed sympathy, dismay and a hint of disgust over the separation and the flurry of gossip that the royal duo have ignited.

“The English are sinking so much money into them,” snapped waitress Leah Braicman. “They could at least playact at getting along.”

Louise Taylor, manager of the pub and a native of London, said, “I’m sad for Diana because I think she had a raw deal.”

Taylor said her mother, “almost in tears,” had telephoned from London with news of the breakup. Still, she insisted that it was a waste of time to worry about the troubled royals. “It’s a shame,” she said. “They’ve got so much money, and they can’t be happy.”

At other watering holes, the royal separation barely rated a yawn.

“Nobody gives a hoot,” said a waitress at Elmer’s, a Simi Valley tavern.

Across town at the Golden Nugget, a Simi Valley pub that draws a few customers from the British Isles, manager Darren Bond said that reaction to the breakup split along national lines.

“The American people think it’s a joke,” Bond said. “The English people take it more seriously.”

Betty Parker, a retired British treasury employee who was visiting Hare & The Hounds Wednesday, said she didn’t object to the separation.

“If you’re not compatible, you should get out of a marriage gracefully, which they are doing,” said Parker, a Calabasas resident who says she used to handle some of Queen Elizabeth II’s financial matters. Parker also believes that the media should give the royals some breathing room. “Let them lead their own lives,” she said. “They have a right to their privacy.”

Tricia McCarthy, co-owner of the memorabilia shop and a native of Scotland, had plenty of plates and other English souvenirs adorned with the image of the Queen on her shelves. But there were few keepsakes bearing the faces of Charles and Diana.

“When anything goes wrong,” she sighed, “people buy them up as collectors’ items.”

McCarthy purchases English tabloid newspapers to keep up with the events that have rocked the Royal Family over the past year, including Princess Anne’s divorce, the breakup of Prince Andrew’s marriage and the recent fire at Windsor Castle.

“I really like the Royal Family,” McCarthy said. “But if your own kids behaved like them, you’d kill them.”

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