I had a really lovely email today following my last-minute attendance at the Oxford-Léon link meeting and AGM from the organiser, sent to me and to the Lord Mayor’s PA Anjana who organises our engagements:

“I would like to thank you both for Thursday evening: Anjana for organising Tony to deputise at our meeting at short notice, as Cllr Sinclair, the mayor was ill and Tony for stepping in. It was clear that Anjana had efficiently forwarded the notes – and that Tony had read them. Your system for dealing with these situations clearly works.

Tony, I appreciate that it must have been difficult with little notice, but your speech was excellent and thank you for staying for the meeting and taking an interest in our work. Thanks especially for your technical help with the Skype link. It was (again) a tad embarrassing that the problems were at this end and that Oxford City Council’s technology was out-done by that of a small NGO in a developing country. Our contacts in Leon were very amused by this.

I’m glad that, with your help, we were able to establish the connection and speak to Jane and Andrew. It is a pity that there were no speakers, as we requested so even had we got Skype working on time, the audience would not have been able to hear them as intended.

All in all it was a good meeting and making £70 on the raffle was an added bonus.”

Receiving such messages is wonderful and really makes it feel worth making the effort to attend everything I am invited to as Deputy Lord Mayor.  I feel honoured and very blessed.