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William Byfield’s summer memories
August 25, 2026 William Gibson
We are fortunate in Chambers to have an associate tenant who is also a specialist in cognitive function. Rajiva Perera and I met at university. It is odd how some things stick in the mind. Whenever I think of Raji, I can almost taste the Crème de Menthe chocolate mousse he conjured up while sharing my flat for a week in his third year and my fourth. It was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. He was reading Medicine and stayed at university for his doctorate and thereafter went into academe. Our paths separated as life took us in different directions although we exchanged seasonal and birthday cards.
I don’t know when he took a fancy to law, but when we next met at a university function over 15 years later, he had taken Bar Finals and become a member of my Inn. Medicine was still his real subject and his specialism the brain, but he had become deeply interested in the concept of culpability, particularly in cases where there were issues of mental health. Once again, we took up our friendship. I saw him regularly around the Temple. When he asked me if he might join Chambers as an associate member, or ‘door tenant’ as we called it then, I raised it in Chambers and the then Head was glad to say ‘yes’.
Apart from being enormously popular, he has over the years been an extremely useful source of help and advice in cases involving clients or witnesses experiencing mental health difficulties, an increasing feature of our work, whether as a result of greater prevalence, improved diagnosis, or heightened awareness.
It has been a great pleasure to see him in Chambers during these heat waves. In my youth, it used to be considered the height of impropriety for a silk to be seen in the Temple during August. Even senior juniors bolted through, hoping not to be noticed. My purpose this August was survival. Somehow, we have air conditioning in Chambers. Raji and I went into the Chambers’ kitchen/common room and made two mugs of tea and I reminded him of a time before, when we were both youngsters and there was an extraordinarily hot summer. As he put some honey in his tea, a habit I remember from those days, he gave me a kind of Derren Brown look as if he was about to hypnotise me.
‘What do you remember of that summer?’ he asked. I talked of a distant time, golden and fun, of youth and vigour and all in the glorious sunshine. ‘You hated it,’ he said, laughing. ‘Moan, moan, moan! You sat down on the pavement one day and said you couldn’t even walk another ten yards into the library. You described your bed as a sauna and threatened to move to Greenland.’ ‘Did I? Yes, I do distantly remember. How strange! I remembered it as a lovely time.’
‘It will be the same now,’ said Raji. ‘Young members of Chambers will one day talk of this as a marvellous summer, assuming we don’t heat up so severely that the summer of 2026 is remembered as the last cool one. It’s how we cope with spinning round on a ball of iron in the middle of a space so vast that it is unimaginable or, as in the words of the funeral service in your Book of Common Prayer, “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery…” How do we cope with all life’s miseries: illness, grief, disaster and getting Life Imprisonment with 25 years to serve? As far as we know, we are the only species with a capacity to reflect and appreciate our dilemma. So, nature has built in a little neurological safety device to filter our experiences.’
The closest human being to nature in our Chambers is Hetty Briar-Pitt, whose practice takes second place to her beloved horses which everybody else manages with tolerated amusement or, in the case of her High Court judge husband, simply toleration. I had imagined that she was in the country spraying her horses with water. Then, the kitchen door was suddenly flung open, hitting the wall. ‘Look!’ she said without further ado. ‘Look at this letter from my water board, threatening legal action for showering my horses. They are TOAST!’ She then pulled the same door open, tearing out before we had seen anything.
‘Will Hetty’s neuro device make her forget this?’ I asked Raji. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but it may help the water company forget Hetty.’
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
August 25, 2026 William Gibson
We are fortunate in Chambers to have an associate tenant who is also a specialist in cognitive function. Rajiva Perera and I met at university. It is odd how some things stick in the mind. Whenever I think of Raji, I can almost taste the Crème de Menthe chocolate mousse he conjured up while sharing my flat for a week in his third year and my fourth. It was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. He was reading Medicine and stayed at university for his doctorate and thereafter went into academe. Our paths separated as life took us in different directions although we exchanged seasonal and birthday cards.
I don’t know when he took a fancy to law, but when we next met at a university function over 15 years later, he had taken Bar Finals and become a member of my Inn. Medicine was still his real subject and his specialism the brain, but he had become deeply interested in the concept of culpability, particularly in cases where there were issues of mental health. Once again, we took up our friendship. I saw him regularly around the Temple. When he asked me if he might join Chambers as an associate member, or ‘door tenant’ as we called it then, I raised it in Chambers and the then Head was glad to say ‘yes’.
Apart from being enormously popular, he has over the years been an extremely useful source of help and advice in cases involving clients or witnesses experiencing mental health difficulties, an increasing feature of our work, whether as a result of greater prevalence, improved diagnosis, or heightened awareness.
It has been a great pleasure to see him in Chambers during these heat waves. In my youth, it used to be considered the height of impropriety for a silk to be seen in the Temple during August. Even senior juniors bolted through, hoping not to be noticed. My purpose this August was survival. Somehow, we have air conditioning in Chambers. Raji and I went into the Chambers’ kitchen/common room and made two mugs of tea and I reminded him of a time before, when we were both youngsters and there was an extraordinarily hot summer. As he put some honey in his tea, a habit I remember from those days, he gave me a kind of Derren Brown look as if he was about to hypnotise me.
‘What do you remember of that summer?’ he asked. I talked of a distant time, golden and fun, of youth and vigour and all in the glorious sunshine. ‘You hated it,’ he said, laughing. ‘Moan, moan, moan! You sat down on the pavement one day and said you couldn’t even walk another ten yards into the library. You described your bed as a sauna and threatened to move to Greenland.’ ‘Did I? Yes, I do distantly remember. How strange! I remembered it as a lovely time.’
‘It will be the same now,’ said Raji. ‘Young members of Chambers will one day talk of this as a marvellous summer, assuming we don’t heat up so severely that the summer of 2026 is remembered as the last cool one. It’s how we cope with spinning round on a ball of iron in the middle of a space so vast that it is unimaginable or, as in the words of the funeral service in your Book of Common Prayer, “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery…” How do we cope with all life’s miseries: illness, grief, disaster and getting Life Imprisonment with 25 years to serve? As far as we know, we are the only species with a capacity to reflect and appreciate our dilemma. So, nature has built in a little neurological safety device to filter our experiences.’
The closest human being to nature in our Chambers is Hetty Briar-Pitt, whose practice takes second place to her beloved horses which everybody else manages with tolerated amusement or, in the case of her High Court judge husband, simply toleration. I had imagined that she was in the country spraying her horses with water. Then, the kitchen door was suddenly flung open, hitting the wall. ‘Look!’ she said without further ado. ‘Look at this letter from my water board, threatening legal action for showering my horses. They are TOAST!’ She then pulled the same door open, tearing out before we had seen anything.
‘Will Hetty’s neuro device make her forget this?’ I asked Raji. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but it may help the water company forget Hetty.’
William Byfield’s summer memories
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