Hi All

Well today is the day that I was made Mayor of my home town.

Thank you all for giving me the honour of my life to serve in this vital role.

I promise to do my best to fulfil this role to the absolute best of my ability.

Below is a copy of my acceptance speech.

Thanks so much

Maddie

Thank you. I want to start by thanking everyone here for giving me the honour of my life to be elected Mayor of my home town.

 

I am honoured to be here making this speech as the youngest woman to have been elected to this role in Croydon’s history.

 

Croydon is my home, I was born here, went to school here, got married here, gave birth twice here, have been elected twice here, have started a business here and have now been made Mayor here. I hope that I am going to be able to give back something of what it has given me.

 

When I became aware that I was going to be made Mayor I jotted down some notes for a speech. This isn’t the speech that I was planning to give, in fact it’s not even in the way I was planning to give it. I still have a copy of the speech I was going to give and I will give it one day but now is not the time.

 

Hope everyone is finding virtual meetings ok by the way and how’s everyone’s lockdown been going?

 

I’ll tell you a bit about mine. Two days before the official lockdown kicked in, my family were already isolating as it appeared that I had contracted Covid-19. I'm currently waiting for my antibody test to prove it for sure but certainly I had all the symptoms listed and I was very unwell.

 

I was however one of the lucky ones. I recovered well and at home thanks especially to my wonderful husband Mark Henson who acted as my nurse whilst trying to keep our business going and looking after our two children, Theo who is 6 and Liam who is 2. I have asked Mark to be my consort for the year. 

 

Mark and I met in 2008 and he has been my rock and my best friend ever since. I can honestly say that I couldn’t have achieved a fraction of what I have without him. Mark I love you more than words can say. You really are the wind beneath my wings.

 

Wednesday will mark 12 years that we have known each other so Mark - happy anniversary.

I have also asked my dear friend Sherwan to be my deputy. I’m so happy that he agreed and I’m sure that with his wife and family we are going to be a brilliant team.

 

Once I recovered I was able to take over some of the strain from Mark but it made me much more aware than I had ever been before of my own mortality. So I realised I wanted to do something that would last so decided we would do a time capsule.

 

In that I wrote a letter, this is a copy of the letter I wrote {wave it} and I’m going to read it you. Remember I was largely better but still recovering when I wrote it: {read from the letter itself}

To the Future

 

Well we are currently living through history. Future generations will learn about this time. It’s impossible to know what the future you are all living through will look like. Today is the Mark’s 50th birthday. We should have been at his birthday party but instead we are stuck at home with a genuine fear for our lives and those of the people around us.

But the main feelings that we are seeing every day during this crisis aren’t just sadness and fear, but hope too. Rainbows have become a symbol of that hope, a hope for the future, for the time you are living in, a time post the Coronavirus.

 

A normal day for us is Mark gets up with the boys, gives them breakfast and then I follow. I try where possible to do some structured activities with the boys whilst looking after some of the coordinating of the electronic side of the support network. 

 

I do lunch and dinner most days though we often can still have takeaways which are currently still functioning.

Yesterday we planted some potatoes - my first attempt at responsibility for our garden. Dad I’m appreciating your gardening all the more at the moment. The same as I’m appreciating all of the babysitting my mum used to do for me before the crisis. I always hoped I was appreciative of the fact that I had such a supportive family but I now know I was nowhere near grateful enough.

 

They do say not having something makes you appreciate what you’ve got. I am so lucky to have such an amazing family and I long for the day when we are allowed to give them a hug again.

 

No one can predict what the future will see us as but my hope is that this won’t be looked back on as a completely sad time. My job as a Councillor is to try to get communities working together, it’s a shame it has taken this to finally make that happen but it has happened and my biggest hope is that, it continues.

 

Maddie

 

{roll up/set aside letter}

 

Those who know me, will know that my greatest passion is children and young people, as everything in society is influenced by what sort of start we give the next generation. In fact, I truly believe in the old adage that society should always be judged by how it treats its children.

 

I have therefore decided that the theme for my mayoral year will be early life. Everything about pregnancy and becoming a parent through to the primary school years.

 

I believe this is also very relevant for this time, we are currently the arbiters of the future and how we act now will more directly than ever define the world that we leave our children. How I will go about this has probably now changed completely compared to what I had originally planned but I promise everyone here that I will still give my all to this role.

 

I will be formally launching my theme tomorrow morning in Ashburton Park where I will also be showcasing a couple of videos which illustrate just a couple of examples of how our wonderful and inventive children and families have been keeping socialising and learning in a safe way during the crisis.

 

Whilst I will be working with many charities and voluntary organisations in the borough throughout my Mayoral year, I also have the immense honour of selecting the charities that will directly benefit from the fundraising activity I will be undertaking. It gives me great pleasure to announce them as part of tonight’s ceremony. They are:

·       St Christopher’s Hospice which has been providing care and support for those who are dying and those close to them in the borough for more than 50 years;

·       Home Start Croydon which is a voluntary organisation committed to supporting our local families, in their own homes, who are experiencing difficulties or suffering stress and who have at least one child under the age of five years; and

·       The Motor Neurone Association which is the only national charity in England, Wales and Northern Ireland focused on improving access to care, research and campaigning for those people living with or affected by this terrible disease.

Finally, the coronavirus has brought out the best and the worst in humanity but the job for those who are left is to ensure that we all work together to put the world back together and ensure that the future is better than the present.

 

Thank you.