9th November is always a sad day for Croydon as it marks the memorial of the tram crash at Sandilands.

There are two memorials to the event, one at Sandilands where the event happened and one in New Addington where the majority of the victims came from. We visited both sites and then went to a service at the cenotaph at the town hall.

Due to covid we decided we would pay our respects in an unobtrusive way so we did not broadcast where we going and when.

When we got to Sandilands however there was a large group of people there to pay their respects. I spoken to them for a while and they asked me to do a speech. I had prepared a speech for the event at the town hall but as we had not planned to make the memorials big public events I had not prepared anything to say there. I therefore had to do the speech off the cuff. That was really hard but it did mean it was from the heart and the conversations I had with the families after I had spoken suggested that, that really touched them.