the high street minister visited belper today and i was lucky enough to meet her. ok so it was very short in so much as i was there to assist chris so my meeting was as long as it took to say “hello i’m andrew, i’m assisting chris today.”
penny mordaunt is the minister and she was in belper to see for herself why the judges of the great british high street awards made the town the 2014 winner of winners.
chris was invited to meet the minister because of the belper train station mosaic project. to realise her commission from transition belper chris worked with schools and visitors to the town’s eco festival belper goes green to create an eight sqaure metre mosaic based on images of the town drawn by the school children.
i enjoyed helping chris to move the panels into the venue and i did have a few moments of doubt about wether i should actually be in the venue to meet the minister.
while we waited for the ministerial party to arrive there was a familiar air of waiting. this evolved slightly when one of the asembled party joked “he’s looking for snipers” about the security person scoping the outside vista.
this took me into another world momentarily. my perception of media coverage meeting those whose life are directly influenced by what happens within the construct. my internal monologue at odds with itself. my real world coming close to an unreal world. it has to be unreal as i can’t personally prove it’s real.
when the minister arrived i was struck with how lovely she seemed, youthful, approachable and very at ease with herself. i watched chris chat with ease about the community involvement and seemlessly invited her to add a tile herself. without a flinch she agreed and directed by chris duely added her piece to the mosaic.
i’ve had a day outside of my day and have really enjoyed it. my sphere of reference of politics has been given a nudge and i’m hopeful that there are other ministers like penny … i say like penny however i don’t know what she’s like.
i’m hoping that uk politicans are people who have days outside of their day, have time for other people and care that politics is a meaningful process and not one that has the piss taken out of it so much because those within it allow themsleves to appear in a manner that allows other to depict them that way.
i’m looking forward to tomorrow when my day will be inside my day.
