I WAS there.

It’s not often that we get to witness history being made and can say those three little words.

I was there, for instance, to see the 2012 Olympics, and I was there last Thursday, too: 7.15pm, November 24, 2016.

It was the annual general meeting of the Friends Of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, of whom I am one, and we witnessed something amazing.

After the formal business of the annual meeting, the floor was given to Hadrian Ellory-van Dekker, the man who got the job of delivering Swindon’s new museum and art gallery.

Hadrian is an impressive man.

Lord Joffe, of Liddington, who was one of Nelson Mandela’s lawyers, then co-founded Hambro Life (Allied Dunbar) and was one of the people who interviewed Hadrian for his job, told me he had never come across a better interviewee in his life.

And, last Thursday, it was easy to see why.

Hadrian is a man of vision, a quality that has not been in short supply among leaders in Swindon’s overall history, but - let’s be frank - has been rare in recent times.

But he also has charm, charisma and an even more precious commodity: Approachability.

On Thursday he gave us a sneak preview of what the new museum and art gallery is going to look like, in the unlikely event we get the money to pay for it.

Although it will be officially unveiled in public on December 8, he was happy to trust us not to let the cat out of the bag by revealing the design.

So I cannot describe it, but I can say it looks sensational.

Even more sensational, however, is the fact that - as mere members of the public - we were at last being let in on a heritage ‘secret.’

That was my ‘I was there’ moment.

If I say Swindon Borough Council must be Britain’s worst local authority for engaging with the public, it will come as no surprise, because you already suspected that.

They still haven’t worked out the correct order in which councils should deliver decisions/actions and consultation.

They always get them the wrong way round.

If anybody can deliver the museum and art gallery, Hadrian can, but even for him it’s a gigantic challenge.

First he has to convince Swindon folk (a notoriously difficult gig) that they actually want a new museum and (harder still) an art gallery.

Then he has to prove to the main funders, the Heritage Lottery Fund, that he has all of us on board.

They don’t fund anything until they are sure the public is properly engaged.

And nobody can be in any doubt that for that to happen there needs to be a seismic shift in the council’s attitude to the Swindon public, and not least when it comes to the town’s heritage.

For evidence, you need to look no further than that other huge and important project in the town, the restoration of the Mechanics’ Institute.

Its future will be decided by Forward Swindon, the town’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster, on account of most people are unsure whether this expensive and unaccountable council quango still exists, where it is or what it looks like.

Because, if you are an ordinary taxpayer or even someone heavily involved in heritage, you have almost certainly never met it face-to-face.

If we are denied the money for our sensational new museum and art gallery it will not be Hadrian’s fault.

But rather it will be because councillors somehow still have every trust in Loch Ness Monsters, and none at all in you and I.

The day has come to stop insulting us by pretending to engage with residents, and start turning the decision-making process into “I was there” moments for an excluded population.