@sasha
simple past is just fine here and by no means unacceptable
this comes from your first link:
'Note that the simple past tense is not normally used when there is no time reference.
For example, we do not normally say:
' I met him. OR His father died.'
That's a kind of stretch. This 'default condition' that the simple past is (almost) no go without past time adverbials got blown way out of proportion. They twisted it a little bit.
The simple past doesn't necessarily to be tagged along with past time reference.