This morning I am taking my first step to freedom. For thirty-nine years I was a serf, a vassal, a wage slave – a Tiny Tim – scurrying to work in the City. Do you remember how Act III of La Bohème opens? Workers are being searched at the gates of Paris as they arrive for work. That was me.
There were moments when I thought that perhaps my masters were looking kindly on me.
In 1990 the Lord Mayor gave me a certificate for good conduct, or maybe it was for something else, like parking illegally. I kept the picture but not the certificate. Twice I was an extra in the Lord Mayor’s show and once, disastrously, formed part of a Guard of Honour at St Paul’s to receive the Queen on the occasion of her silver jubilee. More successfully I fired a gun at a salute to mark the arrival of Princess Anne’s first-born.
But I have never been a City insider. Today this may be rectified. I have an appointment for an interview at the Chamberlain’s Court in the Guildhall at which I shall apply for Freedom of the City of London. The two requirements to ensure success are to hand over £100 and make this declaration:
I do solemnly declare that I will be good and true to Our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second; that I will be obedient to the Mayor of this City; that I will maintain the franchises and customs thereof, and will keep this City harmless, in that which in me is: that I will also keep The Queen’s Peace in my own person; that I will know no Gatherings or Conspiracies made against the Queen’s Peace, but I will warn the Mayor thereof, or hinder it to my power; and that all these points and articles I will well and truly keep, according to the laws and customs of this City, to my powers.
The only City custom with which I am familiar is lunch – so I’m taking a friend to Luc’s Brasserie in Leadenhall Market.