17 May (Part 3) - Named and blamed
On the way in to yesterday’s council meeting I was intercepted by a young lady at
the door who wanted to know my name. This, I thought, was something new and may
be the prelude to new restrictions, so I gave my first name only to see what the
reaction might be. It wasn’t what I expected. “Mr. Knight” was invited in. My
notoriety travels before me. The equally helpful and patient Mr. Dave Easton, the council’s
new(ish) Head of Members’ Services later explained that they were looking out for Alan
Downing’s guests who had been allocated reserved seats in the front row.
I’m surprised to have been considered a possible for one of the honoured few; I long ago
stopped wearing a suit to council meetings and although I was wearing a tie, in
other respects was not far above the threshold for scruffiness. I hid myself on the back row.
Then
another funny thing happened at the end of the meeting. A very pleasant
lady approached me to say that my blog reference to her last month was inaccurate. I
apologised and said I would correct it and thanked her for providing the
opportunity to put it right. I was puzzled as to how I could get
something so wrong as I never write anything here without being sure of my
sources; but mistakes can happen.
What I said about the lady on 30th April was “Councillor
June Slaughter is on the board of Bird College, a sort of local Italia Conti
theatrical school”. Councillor Slaughter told me she took only a minor role in
the music department. I accept she must be right but where did I get my information
from? I was relieved to find that I had not knowingly led you astray. The first ten words
were lifted verbatim from Bexley council’s website. I have added a footnote to the
original entry and I’m grateful to the councillor for it. It’s nice to be able to claim
that Bonkers is more accurate than the council site.