00:00It's nice, I catch the tram down, and half the tram's dressed up as Santa, so it kind
00:11of brings, it all starts to, yeah, come together and make for a great morning.
00:16My wife passed away just over seven years ago.
00:20She was an auxiliary nurse at the hospice, and I got a lot of support from the hospice
00:24afterwards.
00:25So, yeah, it's a cause very dear to my heart, and I'll support it whichever way I can.
00:33So this is just one of the many ways of doing it and enjoying it, and it's the start of
00:39the Christmas spirit, really, 1st of December.
00:43Two thousand runners doing for two thousand different reasons.
00:47Afterwards, I'm going to go with my granddaughter to buy our Christmas tree, that's like our
00:52tradition as well.
00:53We've never done it before, we've always known about it, but then we thought this year, because
00:57obviously Mabel is the face of this year's Santa Dash, we thought we'd better come and
01:00give it a go, and I think we'll do it for every year coming, because it's just amazing.
01:05Mabel's got Matting's disease, we found out last year, which is a, basically it's like
01:11childhood dementia, it's a life-limiting illness, where children tend to lose, well, they lose
01:17all the skills, it's very progressive, so it's just a horrible, horrible disease.
01:23Bryan House has made such a huge difference.
01:25I think the word hospice comes with so many connotations, it being a place where people
01:29go to pass away, and it's not that at all, it's actually a place where the children go
01:34to live, and some of the stuff that they do with them is just incredible, you know, they
01:39bring them to the sandcastle, to the zoo, she's stayed over at Bryan House, and she
01:44just, you know, her face lights up when she goes in, they just love her, it's just a brilliant,
01:49brilliant place.
01:50We've got a group of kids here today, obviously for our football club, TM Sports, so we do
01:55it every year, so we're just trying to raise money and help out as best we can.
01:58We've got like 30 of us down today, which is, like I say, 10 more than we had last year,
02:03so trying to build it up slowly, and try and get everybody down from the whole club.
02:08We were last year a bit competitive, we had quite a few that wanted to, like I say, try
02:11and beat each other, but this year I think we've gone collectively, just to walk around
02:14and start as a group and finish as a group.
02:17As you get nearer to the front, like I said, the music gets the kids going, parents all
02:20dive in and jump in as well, and we're going to sing a song, a bit of a dance before we
02:24set off, it's all good.
02:25We are officially opening Christmas with our annual Blackpool Santa Dash, the Santa Dash
02:31event is participating from the Sandcastle Waterpark, as you can see behind me, there
02:36are hundreds of Santas ready to start their race, so there's 1,600 in total, raising over
02:44£38,000 for Bryan House Children's Hospice, so all of those funds really make a difference
02:50for the children within the hospice, for various different activities, sponsored for nurses,
02:56for care, in all different aspects of the hospice.
02:59So they'll be setting off at 11 o'clock, heading down to the Manchester pub, and then return
03:04in for a very well-deserved hot chocolate and medal.
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