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Dec. 3rd, 2003 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanIt's almost 11PM as I write this for later posting, and I've done nothing with my evening. So I shall sit and write a post before going to bed, because that's a productive way to spend my time. Obviously.
The flat is cold and silent. As is increasingly common these days, there is nothing I feel like watching on television, so I've been reading and catching up with about a week's worth of list email. And drinking port. The cases that have been taking up much of my working hours for the last few weeks are, I hope, safely laid to rest, at least until after Christmas, which I have suddenly noticed approaching like a boy racer. I actually write some Christmas cards last night, though only a small fragment of the list. By the end of the week I might actually manage to post them.
Hah. My English teacher in primary school taught us that one should generally seek to avoid using the words "get" and "got". Hence the rewriting of that last sentence to avoid the term "get around to". It's strange how certain idiosyncracies of my teachers stay with me. Like the insistence of my history teacher -obviously a major influence on my life- that when writing an essay one should never use the words "I think", because everything in an essay except for those rare birds, incontested facts, which usually turn out to be chimeras in any event, is an opinionated argument anyway, or should be if it's worth reading at all. I stuck to that line for years, but it's general practice in my profession to use the phrase "in my opinion" to a quite ludicrous extent.
Where was I.... nowhere particularly important it seems.
I've had a string of probate cases recently. I really dislike them quite intensely. As I'm sure some judge somewhere said wisely once, there is nothing like a will for bringing out all the petty jealousies and old arguments that lurk beneath the surface of any family, and it often seems that the less actual money is involved the more unpleasant things become. Once families descend into that kind of bitterness, they never seem to listen to their lawyers telling them (if those lawyers are being ethical) that between them they're pissing away more than half the estate on said lawyers fees. (There is a judge's quote about this, something to the effect of "he finished his homemade will and went about his business, probably thinking he had done a good days work. As indeed, for the legal profession, he had.") And before anyone calls me and my profession rapacious, let me point out that to reach where I am now I've accumulated more than £20,000 of debt, nor was I a registered charity last time I looked. I do pro-bono work when I can afford the time.
Sorry, that was snippy. But it occasionally becomes necessary to point this out. Frankly give me big commercial disputes any day of the week. No, don't give me criminal work: it's ill-paid, depressing, and involves associating with lots of criminals... (yes, like many people in my profession, some of my high ideals have been replaced, or at least tempered, by cynicism...)
Ho hum. Maybe I should go to bed... Currently reading Mary Hoffman's Stravaganza: City of Stars, the second in the series, which is fairly good children's fantasy, particularly if you're interested in Renaissance Italy, and A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories, which I love.
The flat is cold and silent. As is increasingly common these days, there is nothing I feel like watching on television, so I've been reading and catching up with about a week's worth of list email. And drinking port. The cases that have been taking up much of my working hours for the last few weeks are, I hope, safely laid to rest, at least until after Christmas, which I have suddenly noticed approaching like a boy racer. I actually write some Christmas cards last night, though only a small fragment of the list. By the end of the week I might actually manage to post them.
Hah. My English teacher in primary school taught us that one should generally seek to avoid using the words "get" and "got". Hence the rewriting of that last sentence to avoid the term "get around to". It's strange how certain idiosyncracies of my teachers stay with me. Like the insistence of my history teacher -obviously a major influence on my life- that when writing an essay one should never use the words "I think", because everything in an essay except for those rare birds, incontested facts, which usually turn out to be chimeras in any event, is an opinionated argument anyway, or should be if it's worth reading at all. I stuck to that line for years, but it's general practice in my profession to use the phrase "in my opinion" to a quite ludicrous extent.
Where was I.... nowhere particularly important it seems.
I've had a string of probate cases recently. I really dislike them quite intensely. As I'm sure some judge somewhere said wisely once, there is nothing like a will for bringing out all the petty jealousies and old arguments that lurk beneath the surface of any family, and it often seems that the less actual money is involved the more unpleasant things become. Once families descend into that kind of bitterness, they never seem to listen to their lawyers telling them (if those lawyers are being ethical) that between them they're pissing away more than half the estate on said lawyers fees. (There is a judge's quote about this, something to the effect of "he finished his homemade will and went about his business, probably thinking he had done a good days work. As indeed, for the legal profession, he had.") And before anyone calls me and my profession rapacious, let me point out that to reach where I am now I've accumulated more than £20,000 of debt, nor was I a registered charity last time I looked. I do pro-bono work when I can afford the time.
Sorry, that was snippy. But it occasionally becomes necessary to point this out. Frankly give me big commercial disputes any day of the week. No, don't give me criminal work: it's ill-paid, depressing, and involves associating with lots of criminals... (yes, like many people in my profession, some of my high ideals have been replaced, or at least tempered, by cynicism...)
Ho hum. Maybe I should go to bed... Currently reading Mary Hoffman's Stravaganza: City of Stars, the second in the series, which is fairly good children's fantasy, particularly if you're interested in Renaissance Italy, and A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories, which I love.
