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Three knives and a kiwi fruit 2008-12-05 | 12:19 p.m. So last night I ended up in a barrister's chambers in the middle of central London, brought home souvenirs (read: items of festive theft) of three fancy butter knives and a kiwi fruit (WTF?) and this morning woke up with my hair smelling of eau de lawyer. What are you looking at me like that for?! The Crown Prosecution Service party was pretty good. Unfortunately it was �5 for a glass of wine, although it ended up not being a problem as we all managed to be kindly bought drinks by any barrister/policeman we'd ever had even the vaguest link to. 'Hey there Mr...um, er...so anyway, I once did a five minute long plea and case management hearing with you! How have you been?!' It's weird talking to barristers as actual people. Think back to how you viewed your teachers at school and how you couldn't imagine them having a life beyond teaching. God forbid they had outside lives, engaged in sexual activity, etc. Some are actually not too bad, some are amusing with comical dancing and some are just gossipmongers, asking who I'd worked with that I liked and disliked and slagging various people off - 'Oh, so you did the Barry George case with Mr X? What a twat he is!' And so on and so forth. Barristers are not so far off from your Average Joe, really. Well, an Average Joe who's dirty rich, but that's by the by. The venue itself was fine, being a nice bar with dancefloor and DJ, just off Fleet Street. The toilets, however, were woefully inadequate, there being just two for the ladies. By the end of the evening they resembled, both in appearance and stench, those found at the end of a five-day music festival. Truly disgusting. But that's the CPS for you! Thankfully my aim of not getting too pissed went according to plan, as I knew policemen and the prosecution from my current trial (which won't be finished until into January) would be there and I didn't want to do anything cringeworthy, like try to kiss, topple in a drunken heap or vomit on any of them. The same can't be said for them unfortunately as they became quite inebriated indeed, bought me drinks and then one of the policemen (who spends all day in court doing fuck all and eating the usher's sweets) decided to hug me very hard against my will (probably because I was wearing a dress without a bra) and tell me 'I am seeing you in a different light,' before Mr Prosecution told him to 'leave the stenographer alone!' The party was wrapping up just before midnight and I soon discovered Jenn had made friends with a (fit and, unlike most, not 200 years old) barrister who invited us back to his chambers and then onto another party. Well why the hell not! His chambers building was fascinating, having a kind of Harry Potter-ish boarding school feel with big, old rooms stacked with hundreds of books and long corridors which practically called out for a game of hide and seek to be played in them. Really quite charming. We abandoned the idea of the party, as the thought of getting a taxi back from central London to Wandsworth wasn't particularly appealing, and as enjoyable as parties can be, it would have been a bad move considering we're both at work today. Gaz asked to stay over last night as he was at a gig in Brixton and my house is a lot closer to the venue than his is. Jenn's boyfriend Matthew was also staying over. Hmm...how convenient for them both...surely they wouldn't be ensuring we returned home rather than get up to large amounts of mischief with any legal types. As if we would do such a thing! |
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