Liadnan

One week you have nothing to do. You spend your time improving your tetris skills.

The next week you have files by the armfull piled on your desk. You have a High Court injunction first thing tomorrow and the papers didn't arrive until 4. You have some urgent devilling to do on a major case. You have two other hearings to prepare for, pleadings to write and two opinions promised by the end of the week.

Tetris or patience, that is the question.

Tetris. And thinking about beaches where the water is 80F at 9AM, just time for a dip before work.

Haven't accomplished anything I meant to today. Decided to go to the cenotaph when I finally summoned up the courage to emerge from the covers.

I just looked at myself in the mirror and realised my forehead is accumulating lines at a terrifying rate. I'm going to end up looking like W.H.Auden, you mark my words.

Des Lynam a surprisingly good HIGNFY host.

Brizzle on a sodding 8.15 train tomorrow. Arse. Suppose I'd better find and iron a clean shirt and go to bed. When did I become so responsible?

So, with the full day (and the rest) trial with which today was supposed to be occupied adjourned after half an hour (with an order for indemnity costs for the wasted costs of the day against the other side -don't ask, it's a Very Good Thing though) I decided to take the rest of the day off. Offices in central London are not the place to be in this weather (and it isn't even sunny..,)

Have voted. Don't like the PR system for Europe though, I don't mind the idea of PR as such but I object to having to vote for a party slate en bloc without any say in which member of the slate is my preferred candidate.

Conversations with my bank manager are much more entertaining now it isn't simply a sea of red. Having first had an argument with them over whether it was my problem or theirs that a restaurant I went to a month or so ago had charged me twice for the bill (theirs) we then embarked on a discussion of why, precisely, I had been charged for an overdraft.

"Well, you must have gone over your free overdraft limit."

"Please to point out where, precisely, I went into the red at all."

"Um."

"So I'd like you to check that each and every bank charge I've ever incurred from you was properly made."

I emerge triumphant and leave, pausing only to kick a small puppy.

***

Budapest was, as I've already indicated, a fun weekend, though heavier on the drinking than the cultural side. We stayed on a boat, (or botel, if neologisms don't make your fillings ache) which was perhaps a little on the small side, but reasonably convenient and cheap. I can't say I recommend the "Porn and Mafia" tour, or at least, those going on it should be prepared for a mysterious lack of any mafia and the porn being limited to the guide allegedly being an ex-porn star, also for Strange American Girls whose intentions are vague (muttermutter); but otherwise a clear success.

I also managed to have a proper Idea about something I could write for the first time in ages while I was there, though I can't quite see any connection between the idea and the weekend.

***

There are three things I could do tonight: go to a Chancery Bar Association lecture rivetingly entitled "Ramsay 25 years on: the future of tax avoidance" (the Annual Lecture and the high point of the ChBA's year); go to a concert at Westminster Cathedral of renaissance stuff for Lent (which is actually quite tempting); or sweet FA. The last seems the most likely.

***

I tracked down, through no less than three degrees, the Opportunity that seemed to be available last week... unfortunately I was informed by the penultimate link that she has a boyfriend. Ho hum. I am now confused on whether this shows my decision to turn it down, on the grounds she was too drunk to know what she was doing, to be the height of wisdom or the depths of folly.

London is gorgeous when (a) it is sunny and (b) there are no tourists and about half as many residents as usual. I think we should arrange for this to happen more often.

That is all.

(So why on earth am I sitting in an internet cafe. Good question...)

See, this is how being a barrister works. One minute you've been working 7AM to 8PM six days a week for what seems like forever. Next thing you know you come into the office and there is frankly buggerall to do because you are waiting on Things Happening. Well, there is stuff to do but it is neither urgent nor interesting and it's vaguely springlike and sunny in London.

So instead I spent most of the day trying to book a hotel in Athens in the summer (two nights, for the benefit of my friends who remain blissfully uncomprehending of how horrible Athens is in August and want to see the sights).

Not really sure what to do with my livejournal. I don't really feel like writing in too much detail about my private life; the interesting stuff that does happen at work I can't talk about, by definition; and I'm not really keen on using it as a kind of personal soapbox either, I prefer to do my opinionated pontificating in more interactive places: the Culture list in particular. Or the pub.