IF ANYONE had so much as dropped a hint of what was about to happen, I’d have been off.

Despite the long frock and irritating headdress – gripped so tightly in place it would have made your hair curl, if only mine didn’t do it all by itself – there’s no question.

You would not have seen me for dust. Queen or no queen. No, not that one.

As a 10-year-old I was one of hundreds of children who took part in an annual ritual called the Festival Of Queens.

It seemed pretty straightforward at the time. I went to Sunday School. Once a year we were each given a small booklet containing smiley pictures of children we somehow knew didn’t have as much to smile about as we did.

We dutifully sold Sunny Smiles, each picture neatly detached with kindly provided perforations and handed over (unripped if possible) in exchange for a small donation.

Buyers usually paid up willingly, often with a gentle reminder to remember just how much most of us have to smile about.

When the wheedling and cajoling – sometimes you have to make a nuisance of yourself to close the deal – was complete and the empty book was balanced by a full pocket, it was truly smile time.

Until I was told that I had another role to play, as one of the party which went from our Sunday School to hand over the money we’d raised for the charity, the National Children’s Homes.

As a tomboy tearaway more used to climbing trees and playing cricket in the street, the gold frock, circlet of flowers and long white gloves didn’t sit well with the by now red and probably sulky face. Well I ask you. Me, with a big bow!

The biggest stage in my young life had so far been in church pantomimes. Little did I know that the one I was about to be pitched on to was something a whole lot bigger and scarier.

Fortunately, as one of the attendants to our Sunday School queen, I was too busy trying not to stand on my own dress, that of our very grown-up looking queen or to trip up the purse-carrying page boy who quite possibly was more terrified than me.

We trooped up the stairs, emerged on to the stage of Huddersfield Town Hall and gasped. There were lights, people and noise.

It doesn’t take Einstein to recognise a life-changing moment. My affinity with the Town Hall was instant, the relationship immediately clear.

I would sit in its seats, applaud in the appropriate places, fetch and carry (but only under the stage not on it) and spend hours in its meeting rooms and great hall, listening, reporting, even debating, on all manner of issues.

And I have. There have been moments when I’ve wondered if I just wouldn’t be better employed elsewhere – when the issue of whether lighting up in council committee meetings, for example, was discussed more vigorously than anything else on the agenda, when the audience proved livelier than the wrestlers trying to be convincing in the ring, or when another re-count at election time seemed inevitable.

There have also been moments when I’ve thought, how lucky am I. Getting to go the full seven rounds with a top theatre designer over his plans for the Lawrence Batley Theatre; seeing Tibetan monks sharing prayer rituals in wintry Huddersfield and hearing Messiah sung by the town’s inimitable Choral Society.

And there have been moments when I’ve thought, what am I doing? Trying to sort out catering staff and big band musicians at yet another Press Ball when everyone else was out front dancing, flogging raffle tickets and programmes or sort out missing models, props, actors and musicians at all manner of charitable events and worst of all, trying to comfort a tiny tot of a model who’d suddenly heard the excited fashion show audience and bawled!

I dimly remembered how I’d felt as a 10-year-old, being kept in the dark about just how many people can pack the Town Hall when they know there is something to see and hear.

In my view then – and now – it is definitely a stage for the grown-ups! But many children have thankfully proved me wrong and happily strutted their stuff on its boards as if it were their very own territory.

And of course it is. As celebrations get underway this weekend to mark the hall’s 130th anniversary let’s all pledge to ensure that its doors remain open to all for many more years so that they too get to share and create some of the adventures that I and many others have enjoyed there.