The Silent Ceremony to Remembrance Sunday
9th November 2019A Week of Tradition and Pageantry
Close to the time to a change of Lord Mayor, the City becomes a particularly special place for the Livery.
On Tuesday we attended the Lord Mayor's Charity Feast at Guildhall. The spectacular event, guarded by the Pikemen and Musketeers, was rocked by a youth group, sponsored by the Lord Mayor's appeal and based on the music of Queen. The evening itself, with an auction hosted by Lord Archer, raised in excess of £150,000- a fabulous result!
The Mistress and i also had the pleasure of an invitation from the Horners' Company to their annual Lecture. Its topic was the importance and challenges of developments in the chemistry and physics of polymers....and how their ultimate failure to decompose remains unresolved. It was profoundly enlightening stuff and, to be candid, far beyond our pay grades!!
On Friday it was then back to Guildhall for the Silent Ceremony, an age-old tradition to transfer authority from Peter Estlin to William Russell. Sadly, with both the ceremony silent and a packed room, it was also largely invisible! But the atmosphere was amazing and a great prelude to the Lord Mayor's Show on Saturday.
The Show, in contrast, was a parade of fun, formality, colour, noise and character. I had the honour of walking in it with the Senior and Renter Wardens. We particularly enjoyed the Senior Warden's secret supply of sloe gin as we smoked our churchwarden clay pipes on the HQS Wellington. And the added bonus was that we even managed to stay pretty dry!