Banging headache – so laid in bed feeling sorry for myself. Eventually staggered to my computer and cleared emails and paperwork and then collapsed again.

Fortified with extra-strong, super-duper level Panadol, I get up to go to a Policing Planning Panel meeting. After that I would have to go straight onto the Mansion House for the Lord Mayor of London’s Dinner for London Government.

I had telephoned Richard Sumray (a magistrate member of the Metropolitan Police Authority) and Chair of the Police Planning Panel the night before and left a plaintive cry on his message recorder. Something to the tone of – ‘are you going to wear evening dress to the meeting and can we share a taxi to the Mansion House’. I usually feel extremely guilty if I use a taxi – but there comes a point on a rainy night, with no time between commitments and very high heels – when I gracefully give in.

Richard ‘phoned back to ask which dress he should wear? Of course it was black tie for him (it’s so easy for men) – but I decided that the short red cocktail dress was too much for a police meeting, and wore a more demure trouser suit with evening top. I know this is girlie stuff – but such is political life and the demands of dress code.

Of course, dress code didn’t bother Mayor Livingstone. He didn’t bother with black tie – in fact he didn’t bother with a tie at all. The old judge sitting on my left nearly had apoplexy at the cheek of the bugger! He fulfilled all my prejudices about judges I have to say. However, on my other side was the chair of a big financial group of companies who was a

live wire – and who it was a pleasure to spend most of the evening talking too.

You are sooooooooo dependent on who you get sat next to. Over the five dinners for London Government that have happened since we were first elected, I have gone from very near the outlying tables at the far flung end to the inner ones at the top table end. At anywhere but the Corporation of London one might think this a random effect – but I think

it is deeply significant.

The think I love (and the reason I staggered from my sickbed) to this dinner is, whilst I trash tradition, eschew formality and all of that – no one does it like the Corporation. Men in uniform holding metal pikes adorn our avenue as we are announced. The service is impeccable and the processing and timing immaculate.

The rumours were that Mayor Livingstone would produce a ‘surprise’ in his speech. Well – surprise, surprise – the Government would come up with £200 million of PFI credits for the Thames Gateway Bridge. Staggered I was.

That the Government would seal its remarriage with a dowry!

Thereafter – a stirrup cup in the ante room – and then home to bed!