On the 29th of April 2011, Prince William and Princess Kate were married.
Our families from St Louis, Missouri, USA and Manchester, UK were in Florida that week having a wonderful holiday. We set our alarms for 5.30am to be awake and ready for the start of the wedding at 6am US eastern time. Mary, my mum Joan and sister-in-law Tina enjoyed lovely cups of English tea from their special William and Kate mugs while they watched the royal wedding. Whilst they watched the events unfold, my dad Ralph, my brother Steve and I cooked up a feast of American breakfast for everyone, including the kids, soon waking up. We celebrated the marriage with American pancakes, eggs, steaks, bacon, sausage, and toast!
On Sunday morning, 31st of August 1997, I woke up around 630am and collected my brother Steve and his wife Tina from their hotel to take them to the train station.
They had come over from the St Louis, Missouri, USA to visit me as I had just moved to the UK in 1996. We had a wonderful visit and been to lots of amazing places around the Northwest of England. On the drive to the train station every radio station was playing slow, sombre songs with no DJ speaking between songs. I commented to Steve and Tina that the music wasn’t always so sombre on a Sunday. Finally, the DJ broke in between songs and told the audience that Princess Diana had died in a car accident. I pulled over, parked up, and we just looked at each other in shock. What a difficult period of time this was! We will never forget Diana and her amazing contributions to the world.