When people learn that I am the town mayor of Southwold and chairman of the town council they often ask me questions with a wry smile, as if to say you must be mad!

My response is to smile back and tell them there is a great deal of hard work but it is great fun plus a privilege to serve the whole community.

We have just co-opted a new councillor to bring us up to the full complement of twelve which is great news. We had four people who put themselves forward to serve the town. The four presentations we heard demonstrated their passion and commitment to Southwold as well as the skills they could bring with them to support the council in their work. We are very lucky to have people willing to serve as councillors on a voluntary basis. Volunteering, as you will recall from last month's article, is the theme of my mayoral year with the Loft Youth Centre as my charity for the year.

Last Friday, July 21, my first foray into creating an event to raise money for The Loft came to fruition. We held a cheese and wine tasting evening at the Stella Peskett Millennium Hall. The cheeses were provided by Mills & Sons (& Daughters) ably supported by Louise Stammers, the recently retired Nutters proprietor. The wine was supplied by Adnams through Jez Reeve and Dan Kirby. Jonny Crickmore of Baron Bigod's cheese fame from Bungay gave an excellent talk on dairy farming, raw milk and cheese making. We had Luke Flunder to talk us through the wines on offer. I was delighted that so many of the High Street shops and businesses supported us with raffle prizes, too many to acknowledge individually in this short article.

The evening was very well supported by the community and we raised £540 to support the valuable work of The Loft Youth Centre with the young people of both Southwold and Reydon.

The event entailed much hard work by everyone that clearly demonstrated the community is strong and that volunteering to support the town is equally strong.