Last updated 12:55, Friday, 23 May 2008

It’s mayor-making season. The great, the good, the deserving – and some with greatness thrust upon them – are relinquishing and receiving civic bling, donning heavy robes, sporting funny hats and making promises to serve us all their days. Or the next 365 at any rate.

Former mayor Elizabeth Mallinson (left) with last year's deputy mayor, Carlisle city councillor Jacquelyne Geddes, after she was sworn in

It’s happening in towns and cities right across the country. Remarkable really – in 2008. Proper survivors, mayors are. They’ve been around for centuries. Like butterflies... not entirely necessary but actually kind of nice.

What a funny carry-on mayoral pomp and processing is; like a Monty Python sketch but with extra wigs and frock coats. So jaw-droppingly formal and imposing, it’s sometimes tempting to forget we self-important little humans made up the ceremonial spectacle simply to establish a pecking order. However sophisticated or new age we become, we little people still insist on pecking orders requiring a lot of dressing up. Makes you wonder how we have the nerve to snigger at morris dancers.

You’d think in this hi-tech, body-popping age of ultra cool, egalitarian, Fairtrade malarkey, we might have decided we’d had our fill of mayors, mace bearers and associated ceremonies with sealing wax. But it seems not.

Be fortunate enough to get that chain around your neck and you’re somebody – guaranteed the biggest chair in the council chamber, a limo with chauffeur, free lunches for the duration and a social engagement diary to make Victoria Beckham feel like Billy-no-mates.

Take on the solemn duties of mayor and you’re in for the year-long haul, with full quota of press calls, church services, best seats at royal visits and Boyzone concerts, tea with dignitaries, cutting ribbons at newly-opened hairdressing salons.

Carlisle’s mayor-making on Monday was a first for me – as an up-close witness, anyway. There have been other such events in other places, of course but Carlisle’s heavily-choreographed performance proved to be quite an exception – as only Carlisle’s could.

Quite an oddity, to tell the truth – hauntingly steeped in ancient tradition, thoroughly modern in uncompromising, prearranged politics (I’m used to the office being fairly offered to each party in turn) and slotted, somewhat ingloriously, into the time-table of the council’s annual meeting. Challenging too for poor Jacqui Geddes. Carlisle’s newly-installed first citizen. She sure does have her work cut out.

Accepting the jewellery, she made a promise. And being a woman, she’ll surely feel obliged to keep it... the promise, not the necklace.

She swore to: “See or cause to be seen nightly the watchmen of the walls of this city truly set searched, and kept for the honour of the Queen’s Majesty.”

Oo er... that’s a lot for a lady of Mrs Geddes’ strength and stature. Typically no men leapt to volunteer assistance with her nightly wall-walking and watchmen-checking. Not even Mr Geddes, her consort, rushed to his wife’s aid – though he must have known supper may be served a little later than normal over the next 12 months... she having to scramble around the castle at nightfall.

But unruffled and verging serenely on the regal, her dignified demeanour said it all: if you want a job doing properly – even that of rooting out invading marauders – give it to a woman with a torch.

And it seems still to be the case that if you want the job of promoting a city doing properly, give it to a mayor – one with robes, old gold, impossible promises and the ability to wear less than glamorous headgear without bursting into tears.

Carlisle has one in 2008 just as it had one in 1231... which is truly remarkable. These days the role is said to be largely ceremonial but some would take issue with that – and I’d be one of them.

There are compelling arguments for directly electing a mayor with real clout. But before that day comes, we shouldn’t run away with the idea that our existing office of mayor doesn’t matter. It does.

Invested in its continuation is a Citizens’ Charter for the promotion of Carlisle – instruction to show the city’s best profile, wear its brightest smile, demonstrate the depth of its character, the integrity of its dealings with others, its faith in the future, endeavour and hope for its communities. That’s more than mere ceremony – with or without watchmen duties.

Whether or not we grow out of our fondness for pecking orders, excuses to dress up, pomp and processions, self-importance and sealing wax, it’s unlikely we’ll ever weary of wanting the best for our home town and the neighbours with whom we share it. And that tends to be where our mayor comes in... dressed to sell.

Not thoroughly modern, to be sure. Not politically blessed with fairness, nor even indispensible. But if we didn’t have one we’d probably try to invent something similar.

It’s the pecking order and preference thing again. First citizens and butterflies. Not entirely necessary – but nice.