Mayor Making

The new Lord Mayor of York was instructed that despite being an atheist she needed a Chaplain, so I got to be it, since we'd both been involved in Stop the War stuff last year and we are both involved at College. It was reassuring that I was both her last and only resort! My dad came along for the jolly, and it certainly was that: processing, fourteen speeches and banqueting. There was seven hours of it, during which I sampled the flavour of local councillor life. The aroma of local government imprinted itself as I witnessed some slightly bad-tempered normal business which was exceptionally inserted into the Mayor Making in the Guildhall by the Labour opposition (this could be regarded as 'pissing on the parade') -- the objection was to a lack of cross-party consultation on the biggest central commercial and residential development that York will have ever particpated in. It brought some earthiness and genuine import to the event in a way mace bearing and antique robe wearing cannot.

I had the fascinating opportunity of sitting next to the Chief Exec of the Council, which was incredibly useful for two things, the first was the insight it gave me into the life of a leading civic bureaucrat and the second was because when I fell asleep (from too much wine), during the Lord Mayors speech, he gave me a well placed and timely nudge!