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0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
0:04.4 | Hello. For obvious reasons, lots of people are thinking back to what they were doing |
0:08.2 | on the 20th of May 2020, because that's when the Downing Street party was. And one of |
0:13.7 | the people who's been sharing their story online of that day is my former colleague from |
0:18.2 | CBBC, the sports broadcaster Simon Thomas. Hi, Simon. How are you? |
0:23.2 | It's been a while. Yes, I mean, it is lovely to catch up with you, but it is a shame |
0:28.8 | that it's kind of a kind of a sad memory that you've got at that time. |
0:32.2 | Yeah, it didn't take me long when the news came out of this party in the summer of 2020 |
0:40.1 | for me to know exactly what I was doing on that day. So my dad had been unwell for a while |
0:45.4 | since his mid-70s, and he had gone into hospitalies in a home, and he'd been in hospital |
0:50.3 | probably for two or three days. And I got a call on the morning of the 20th for my mum, |
0:55.6 | my family, all based up in Northfoot, some of my dad was in the Northfoot Gnore's hospital. |
0:59.8 | And the tone of her voice was very different to how it had been the day before. He wasn't |
1:04.5 | going to get better, and it was now a matter of days. And so I remember saying a mum, |
1:08.6 | what on earth do I do? And she said, well, they're not letting us into the hospital, so |
1:12.7 | I don't know if there's any need for you to come up. But of course, when you know your |
1:16.5 | dad's in his last days, that's the instinct. And you want to get in the van and drive |
1:22.6 | from Reading, whereas living at the time to Northfoot. And we kind of hummed and hard about |
1:26.7 | it. And I spoke to my sister Becky, who lives just outside North, about the possibility |
1:30.7 | of staying there. And I was fortunate that I had a camper van at the time. So we had |
1:33.8 | some of us sleep, and not all be in the house. And she had a message sent round from her |
1:39.5 | WhatsApp group rule, her neighbors in the estate, they live on and just said, what was going |
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