Diary

JULY 2000

July was the month most memorable for the huge number of local communities who invited me to open or attend their summer fairs and fetes, to many to mention by name.  I began to wonder however if it would ever be possible for me to announce the opening of a festival without the constant pitter-patter of raindrops! Unfortunately it was not possible to say yes to every invitation.  This meant that the deputy Mayor, Cllr Roger Robinson was also kept very busy  Fitness and sports also featured this month.  A girl’s sportsday at Corams fields, the youth games at Crystal Palace, where Camden’s teams did very well, a healthy schools event also at Corams and joining pensioners for Tai Chi in the park at Lincolns Inn Fields were all very enjoyable ( I even joined in with the pensioners!).  Another sport which looked to me to be just the kind of exercise I could cope with was demonstrated to me when I attended the Bowls Club on Parliament Hill Fields.  I received a very warm welcome here and the ability to enjoy a good cup of tea and plate of biscuits whilst watching appealed to me.  I was very happy to hear that the club was welcoming players from local schools to learn the game in order to show that bowls is not just the preserve of the retired population.

Members of the Royal family seemed to be arriving in Camden at regular intervals.  Princess Alexandra came to speak at the Royal School and Prince Charles came to formally open Hampstead Town Hall as Interchange’s new headquarters and home to a number of community and arts projects.  I was also pleased to be able to welcome the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother when she came to visit the garden made by pupils of the Cavendish school in Camden Town.  Later in the month I inaugurated a book for birthday grreting from the residents of the borough to be sent to the Queen Mother on her 100^th Birthday in August.  But the traffic was not only going one way.  Along with the Mayoress, my sister Christine and Cllr Barbara Hughes and her daughter, Georgia, I spent a very pleasant afternoon exploring the gardens at Buckingham Palace and partaking of afternoon tea at the Royal garden party. I should admit we visited the tea tent on more than one occasion!!  We even managed to catch a glimpse of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh through the crowds.

In the middle of the month I was invited on a civic visit to Doncaster, our twin town, for their steam and speed fair.  We gave some thought to swapping the mayoral car for a hydrogen powered rocket car or the more ecologically sound electric car currently holding the world speed limit in its type.  We also gave the ‘Trotter’s Independent Traders’ Reliant Robin three wheeler the once over and considered the viability of getting Fred Dibner’s steam roller through the Camden traffic.  In the end we agreed we’d better stick with the Rover.

I was surprised to find that I was as mayor I was a Trustee of the Royal Patriotic Fund.  Something I had never heard of before.  When I attended the annual general meeting of the fund, chaired by its Patron, Prince Michael of Kent, I discovered it had started as a soldier’s widows and orphans fund after the Crimean war and had been going ever since, with 300 Trustees drawn from local councils all across the country.  The meeting was held in the impressive surroundings of Wren’s Chelsea Hospital and it felt very strange discussing the proceedings of an organisation that had such a long history.  It was an interesting visit and probably the last a Camden mayor will have to make as the Fund agreed to change its constitution to reduce the number of Trustees to a much more manageable number.

During this last month of the Summer term I visited a number of schools around the borough and got used to answering very similar questions wherever I went, especially in junior schools.  How old are you? Are you as important as the Queen? Is the chain real gold? How much did it cost? Do you wear it to go shopping?  There were lots of other questions and real interest into the job of being mayor and all the visits were great fun and displayed the wide range of talents to be found in our schools.  I was also invited to attend events at the other end of the education spectrum, graduation ceremonies at SOAS and the Royal Veterinary College.  Awards were also to the fore when I gave out the prizes and certificates for the best Camden gardens, window boxes, containers etc. and at a concert of exam pieces given by students studying traditional Chinese instruments.

The month finished with a very pleasant evening spent at a reception in the ‘Walks’ (gardens) of Grays Inn.  It was an occasion to meet a huge number of the legal community in the area in beautiful surroundings.  We were particularly inpressed with a Griffin carved in ice which formed a centre piece for the event.  This was followed the next day by another  social event at the annual Chalk Farm Oasis and Centrepeace barbeque held in Centrepeace’s very pretty garden.  Both these charities do fantastic work with people living with HIV and AIDS and the event was both great fun and an opportunity to meet with service users and supporters whilst helping to raise much needed funds for the projects.