Cheating is never to do with how attractive you are.

December 27, 2024 – Marie Helvin

Christmases are less fun than when I was younger. Or perhaps it is like my history with snow. I was a child during the last really severe winter which, with a brief interlude of about a week when you saw grass again (and it looked so strange) was otherwise an entirely white landscape between Boxing Day and the first week in March. Weekly blizzards, frozen ponds and stalactites of ice hanging down from everything. We were at a Boxing Day party at my uncle’s when it began in the early evening and my cousins and I danced outside in what quickly became quite a serious blizzard. And so my love affair with snow began. It ended one night in Tudor Street in my second year of tenancy when (probably because of foolish footwear I was wearing) I couldn’t even walk to Middle Temple Hall without sliding and falling all over the place.

This year was a Climate Change Christmas where new December felt like old September. Some family and friends decided to go with me to Christmas Lunch at a restaurant. In fact, we do this at the same place every year and, as the owner reminded me, for the last 16 years. He and I had plenty of time to chat as there was no continuous electricity in the restaurant, for at least an hour. A fault in a nearby sub-station had caused a blackout.

‘At least you can still cook,’ I said, remembering that they had gas ovens. ‘No, monsieur,’ the owner replied, ‘to cook with the gas it needs the electricity.’ Yes, I remembered, my gas boiler is the same. We quickly scoured the first courses on the menu which were all cold. Could we mix and match a few to make a lunch? Indeed, should we do so as quickly as possible, since just as the gas cooks some food, the fridge protects other items from going off.

Just to be even more frustrating, the lights kept coming back on and going off again to raucous cheers. I had visions of an electrician at the sub-station trying out all the combinations of wiring like an old film I remember with a then well-known comedian playing an incompetent bomb disposal officer doing the same to hysterical effect in a plot that involved defusing some explosive device from World War Two. It was probably George Formby, adding the odd tune on a ukulele, but I may be wrong.

In very biblical style, however, the electrician finally let there be light and for the first time since we arrived (bar the odd flashes) we could all see each other properly. It was then that I spotted at an adjacent table Paddy Corkhill, a senior junior from Chambers who is not averse to a drop of wine. I smiled, he froze and then in the way the brain works, I realised that the woman sitting next to him wasn’t Mrs Corkhill, but another person I vaguely recognised from one of their drinks’ parties. This is where being a barrister, particularly a criminal one, is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because without it we would not all be sitting at this plush restaurant in the first place despite my wine selection being on the cheap side nowadays. A curse, because as the eagle spots its prey so the barrister’s honed senses from years of cross-examination, analyses in a micro-second the eyes of the witness.

So then, this wasn’t a family friend taking Paddy out for Christmas lunch because Mrs C was laid-up in a nursing home having slipped on the ice. This was something else. As my guests laughed away, exchanging gifts and toasting each other, my eyes could not leave table Corkhill. Why had he come here when he must have known that I came every year? But had I ever told him about my Christmas ritual? Friendship at the Bar can be great and enduring but it exists within its own galaxy.

Somewhere between the goose (or vegan option) and the Bûche de No.l, I visited the facilities where, just as I was washing my hands, I felt someone come up behind me. No prizes for guessing who. ‘William, please don’t mention this to anyone. I’ll explain later. It all happened because my Recorder sittings were cancelled.’ And then he had gone. Just like magic! Were these and similar shocking consequences of slashing Recorder sitting days for a whole year contemplated in the Lord Chancellor’s risk assessment? I think we should be told.