Lost pearls and pearly queens: A year in the life of the lady mayor of London

Dame Sue Langley is enjoying her final few days in her position as lady mayor, the first citizen of the City of London.

She will have to give up the four-poster bed she has slept in each night with her husband for the past year.

The ceremonial robes that had to be turned up by almost a foot (30cm) for her to wear, as a woman more diminutive in height than most men, will have to be let down and re-hemmed for the next lord mayor.

Usually she would have already handed over the role to the incoming lord mayor, Bronek Masojada, but this year there is an extra week in the job.

"This a leap [year] mayoralty. Once every seven or eight years the way the calendar falls it means we do 53 weeks rather than 52," she explained.

She's spent the year on a personal mission to "unsquare the Square Mile" by getting more young people to visit and consider a career in the City.

And, as all lord mayors do, she has been promoting London, and Britain, abroad.

"This year I've discovered so much goodwill for the UK overseas," she reflected, from the sofa in Mansion House's Venetian Parlour, where a large presidential desk sits in front of a roadmap on the wall, her vision for her mayoral year.

"I think in today's uncertain times, if we don't tell our story, someone else will tell it for us," she said.

"Just being quietly confident about the strengths we have, and they are many, is so critical now."

And maybe that is what will carry the soon-to-be former lady mayor through the next stage of her life.

"Perhaps I can find a way to still promote the UK and talk about some of those strengths," she said.

She has enjoyed representing women in the City of London, having chosen to use the title lady mayor for the role instead of lord mayor, unlike her two female predecessors did.

"I carried the pearl sword in front of the King. I was the first woman to do so," said Dame Sue.

The pearl sword is believed to have been presented to the Corporation of London by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 when she opened the Royal Exchange.

When the reigning monarch comes into the City, then the lord, or lady mayor in this case, carries the sword, which is studded with 2,500 pearls.

Or maybe not quite as many these days.

Dame Sue is leaving something more than pearls of wisdom behind.

One of the Elizabethan pearls dropped out as she was holding the sword.

"I was in St Paul's. I heard a click... roll, roll, roll, roll," said Dame Sue.

She gestures towards the place on the scabbard where a little bit of Elizabethan thread is sticking out and there is a small gap where a pearl should be.

"I think there are now 2,499 pearls," she said with a wry smile.

"Somewhere in St Paul's is a little pearl wedged into the flagstones."

Pearls are a bit of a theme for the lady mayor.

Dame Sue was born in Whitechapel, grew up in West Ham and Hornchurch and considers herself an East Ender.

She became the first lady mayor to be given the honorary title "pearly lady mayor of the City of London" when she took up office a year ago.

Dame Sue may now have to give up her title and her pearly jacket - though she tells me she's keeping the hat - but she plans to continue working with the pearlies in raising money for charity if she can.

She recently gave 23 pearly kings and queens from across London the Freedom of the City of London.

"We held the ceremony here in Mansion House. And of course, being the pearlies we had to have a singsong," she laughs.

This coming weekend will see Dame Sue oversee her second Remembrance Sunday as lady mayor alongside the incoming lord mayor.

Then by next Friday, everything will be packed up and she will return to her home in Hertfordshire that she has barely seen for year.

How will she unwind after all this is over?

"I'm not quite sure," she laughed.

"I genuinely have no idea, apart from I'm going to lie down on a sofa for a little while."

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