Liadnan

Working at home today for a variety of reasons: mainly because my back appears to be buggered again. Eleanor-the-bike* also seems slightly unhappy at the moment, so I've spent a fair amount of time already fiddling around with her. (Hmm.) I'm now faffing around tidying the flat and doing unimaginably tedious administrivia with occasional breaks to check K's PhD data (simply checking numbers add up properly, nothing more complex) and procrastinate about going to Georgia. Also faffing about on the Barbican website: I think I may go to this tomorrow, definitely this next month, and this looks vaguely intriguing...

I'm feeling slightly unsettled and angsty at the moment, nothing special, simply a vague level of discontent, probably largely down to post-holiday tristesse, but there are some other bits and pieces playing on my mind. Trying to finish something I was writing back in the spring, but it simply isn't happening. As a result of this I don't feel I have anything remotely interesting to say about Interesting Stuff at the moment, so I'm not.

*After Eleanor of Aquitaine. This is a private joke that would be unintelligible to all but a few even after explanation and unfunny even to them.

There's no better way to start a new year than with a dose of unpleasant -for all observers and participants- gastric flu, that's what I always say. Well, no, it isn't what I always say, obvs, but it will be a frequent mantra of mine in years to come, you mark my words. I thought I'd recovered by Tuesday, but dragging myself into work proved to be a horrific mistake by the time of my journey home. Half the rest of the department -hell, half the firm- is ill or away for some other more or less defensible reason anyway.

Since one of the deciding factors in my decision to come in today was the ability of free interweb I'm slightly peeved to discover that (a) forsooth I have forgot my password to HMRC Online Tax Returns, and have been through all the usual variations on the usual themes; and (b) I have also forgot my passcode for online banking. Not the most successful organisation in the world.

I am, as my brother informed me (while rather kindly, given it was before 9AM and he wasn't even up when I rang, driving me back from the airport the Thursday before Christmas) going to be an uncle again. That makes 9 and counting. My siblings are trying to bankrupt me. It's a plot I tell you.

You'll find life jackets under your seats. In the event of a water landing, they will keep you afloat, unless you are seized by a giant squid, and dragged screaming beneath the waves.

It is a quarter to 8 on a Friday evening and I have a party to go to. Instead I am sitting in my office waiting for signatures of seven parties to some fourteen documents to be sent through on a Very Large Transaction.

This is only one of many reasons why I am a Proper Lawyer litigator in my real life.

Well, on early showings Labour are set to take 100% of the seats. Admittedly that's based on 1 return, but I think it's indicative.

Actually, if the BBC exit poll is right I should have followed my inclinations and punted on a majority under 80. Christ knows I could do with the money. So broke I'm walking to and from my office every day rather than renewing my travel card, The rest of my life is at similar level.

It's that bank statement time of the month again and my dead reckoning has gone horribly wrong. If I hadn't been paid a significant fee early (a week after it was incurred instead of the usual 3-6 months) I'd be absolutely buggered. At the worst time possible. I think some fee-chasing is in order.

I'm also absolutely freezing. It may well be entirely in the mind, but I'm convinced Primrose Hill is noticeably colder than the rest of London at any given time.

I bent down in the shower this morning and promptly regretted it as I seem to have done more damage to my back than on any previous occasion (and there have been many) since whatever it was I did at Glastonbury 1995. Since on that occasion I was in my year of resting after my undergraduate degree, and it was the start of the second week of Wimbledon, a week of lying on the sofa doing nothing actually caused no interference with my plans whatsoever. This time it's slightly more important. Can hardly move.

The only moral I can see in this story is "never bend down in the shower".

Bah.

It's hot, and for once I'm wearing a suit in the office, having had a depressing and unsuccessful application for an injunction first thing this morning. It's a good, and indeed rather expensive suit. Wool. Dark.

Fucking hot.

I think I shall go home to work for the rest of the day. Where I shall make a point of loafing around in cut off jeans.

... very depressed...

I just saw the top of my head in the offlicence's CCTV.

Bah. I shall never pull again and might as well put in my application to become a monk now.

Afternoon of drinking with Rob, Steph, Adele and David, followed by a reasonably good Greek dinner. Sadly they all buggered off home, and Anna is probably dancing to bleepy music in a field outside Winchester, so I'm morosely drinking on my own. Such is life.

I'm not sure whether Clanwilliam will be amused or irritated to know that Christopher Fildes in The Spectator has picked up on the slightly odd choice of new name Wentworth Rose went for in their rebranding exercise: Origen, and wondered whether the FSA will expect them to follow his sacrifice (bung it into google if you aren't following).

Oh, and via the self-same Speccie but originally from Waterstones Book Quarterly, a rather good exchange with Philip Pullman:

"What do you want a teenage readership to think and feel after reading His Dark Materials?"

"What I want people to feel most fervently after reading one of my books is "I must go out at once and buy his next one."

I find him an irritating man, if a brilliant writer, nonetheless I think he gets points for that.

Rather atypical racing note.... I don't usually weary you with this rubbish, but I'd like to note that in my view, when a major figure at Ladbrokes comes out with comments about "one race every day being fixed" and blames it on the internet betting exchanges, I find myself wondering just how much business said betting exchanges are taking from the high street bookies.

On the other hand... I still want to know what the fuck Kieran Fallon was up to.

New Lindsey Davis, looking pretty good so far, enough already.

I've pulled a muscle in my shoulder, which at least makes a change from putting my back out. Only myself to blame, I suppose, for persisting in carrying huge bags up and down the country, and then continuing to carry only slightly smaller bags containing laptops and those instruments of torture I call "my new shoes" up and down the Northern Line every day; and hanging the lot off one shoulder.

I've been fairly busy this week, the more so because I'm off to sunny Bath this weekend.... and oh, it's springlike, and a semi-holiday week, and I don't feel like work. I console myself every morning by having coffee in the mad Polish café (as opposed to the mad Russian café) in Primrose Hill before sauntering into work around 10, but the upshot is I then have to bang on with the stuff into the evening. I need a personal time-manager.

Still, at least one of my cases has a black humour all of its own. Legal cases often do, though you have to have a certain cast of mind to see it (and, of course, some have no redeeming features whatsoever: a case I had a while back recommending approval of a settlement on behalf of a child almost had me in tears and feeling I was far too soft-hearted for this game).

I remember in a negligence lecture being taught about Baker v. Willoughby [1970] AC 467:

"The plaintiff was crossing a main highway when he was struck by the defendant's car, as a result of which he sustained injuries to his left leg. Both the plaintiff and the defendant had a full view of each other for at least 200 yards prior to the collision and yet neither took any evasive action. The plaintiff sued the defendant for damages in respect of his injuries, but shortly before the hearing of his action he was shot in the left leg during an armed robbery, and his left leg had to be amputated immediately...."

a major authority on concurrent tortfeasors causing related losses, because the Court of Appeal said, essentially, that he could only have damages for the road accident up to the time he in fact lost his leg anyway.

The House of Lords eventually held that:

"(2) That the plaintiff's disability could be regarded as having two causes and where, as here, the later injuries merely became a concurrent cause of the disabilities caused by the injury inflicted by the defendant they could not diminish the amount of damages payable by him, and that, accordingly, the plaintiff was entitled to the sum of £1,200 originally awarded by way of general damages."

Quite right too, logically as well as by gut feeling, but the point is that we decided to find the story highly amusing and a welcome spot of light relief (the lecturer did tell it very well).

Ho hum. Huge congrats; fingers crossed and best of luck; and my sympathy; to the various people who need those things right now.

And there I was thinking I might be able to score a cheap flight to New York next month for The Thing after all. Apparently not: all of a sudden even Kuwait Air flights to NYC are overbooked.

This, and a variety of other minor irritations both personal and professional, has left me in a grumpy mood, which, I'm sure you'll agree, is highly unusual.

You don't agree?

Bah, humbug.