*/
16 July 2009: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies But in battalions” – Hamlet.
I never liked Claudius. He vacillated even more than his nephew. However, he did get that one right. Remember the sixties version of Batman: the first part of each story ending with the duo facing some ghastly predicament near the edge of a cliff, attached to an explosive device or shortly to meet the blade in a sawmill and we had a week to ponder their possible escape.
Last month’s predicament involved Rico Smyth, a senior Silk in my chambers, who was apparently up to something and a pompous twerp of a circuit judge who knew more about it than I did. I was not long in being disabused.
The following morning I was watching The Jeremy Kyle Show on the box (or “flat” as I suppose we should now call it) in the haven of our London house when there was a roar of an engine and an unpleasant screech of brakes. A few seconds later the “buzzer” announced a visitor. I have to say I was annoyed. I had been watching Jeremy’s rather lengthy inquisition of an apparently errant boyfriend and was about to learn whether he had passed the lie detector test. I like Jeremy − “it’s my show, it has my name on it” seems to me an attitude readily comprehensible to young barristers who face so many people nowadays trying to poach their briefs − and I wondered if he, like I, had come to the conclusion that it was Beverley, not Will, who was lying.
Anyway, I shall never know. It was Rico Smyth. “William,” he said, “so sorry to bother you at home. Let me buy you some breakfast.” I am not a technophile but I do know there are easier ways of contacting people you are sorry to be bothering than turning up at their front door in a crimson Lamborghini during The Jeremy Kyle Show. Just as the appearance of a rival CEO unannounced at the office of a business competitor means a hostile bid – or at least it did in Uncle Percy’s case – so the arrival out of the blue of a senior Silk at his Head of Chambers’ home means one of two things: the News of the World has just given him advance notice of next Sunday’s headline (“Top Lawyer and the 3 in a bed romp!”) or he is leaving chambers for greener pastures.
I am glad for Rico’s sake, as I have always liked him, that it was the latter. We went to the only place to eat breakfast, in Green Park, and I toyed with Eggs Benedict as Rico tried to tell me his reasons. I say tried, because I had the strong suspicion he was speaking in code whereby I was meant to take his words and convert them to the opposite meaning. For instance, he said: “I want you to know it’s not you…I fully understand why I couldn’t have a room to myself…Hewart Chambers isn’t a better set than ours…Money isn’t everything, but I have a large family and the property in Ireland and it’s getting tough for me…I don’t mind doing some publicly funded work…I shall miss you all terribly.”
By the time I had reached my third round of delicious hot buttered toast and exotic jams, I felt a strange pulsating feeling around my heart region. Was this the end: beaten, bowed, humiliated, dead in my favourite breakfast haunt? Would I be thrown in the back of the difficult-to-maintain arterial coloured car, with the plates RIC 0, and taken to the nearest morgue? Would my Inn give me a memorial? Was I wearing clean… In fact, I had put my mobile on “vibrate” to avoid interruption, and rather foolishly placed it in my inside breast pocket.
I had four texts that had come just as the battalions to which Claudius referred. FONE CHAMBERS SOONEST (Andrew), I AM HEARING ODD RUMOURS (Paddy – a semi-detached member who is always weeks behind the news), EXTRORDINARY GENERAL MEETING THURSDAY AT 6pm – BE THERE! (a circulating text not presumably meant for me) and REMINDER FROM YOUR DENTIST – MR LIU 2HRS - UL CROWN 9AM TOMORROW.
As I waved goodbye and good wishes to Rico’s exhaust fumes, Hamlet was replaced by Macbeth in my mind:
“Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
Gone − my summer of blue skies and a light Mediterranean spray refreshing my Factor 50 protected skin…there was going to be a real, no-holds-barred row and my Headship now hinged on the equivalent of a No Confidence vote in the House of Commons. Or, as Andrew so helpfully put it when we talked later that day: “Oh well, sir – one down, fifty-four to go.”
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
I never liked Claudius. He vacillated even more than his nephew. However, he did get that one right. Remember the sixties version of Batman: the first part of each story ending with the duo facing some ghastly predicament near the edge of a cliff, attached to an explosive device or shortly to meet the blade in a sawmill and we had a week to ponder their possible escape.
Last month’s predicament involved Rico Smyth, a senior Silk in my chambers, who was apparently up to something and a pompous twerp of a circuit judge who knew more about it than I did. I was not long in being disabused.
The following morning I was watching The Jeremy Kyle Show on the box (or “flat” as I suppose we should now call it) in the haven of our London house when there was a roar of an engine and an unpleasant screech of brakes. A few seconds later the “buzzer” announced a visitor. I have to say I was annoyed. I had been watching Jeremy’s rather lengthy inquisition of an apparently errant boyfriend and was about to learn whether he had passed the lie detector test. I like Jeremy − “it’s my show, it has my name on it” seems to me an attitude readily comprehensible to young barristers who face so many people nowadays trying to poach their briefs − and I wondered if he, like I, had come to the conclusion that it was Beverley, not Will, who was lying.
Anyway, I shall never know. It was Rico Smyth. “William,” he said, “so sorry to bother you at home. Let me buy you some breakfast.” I am not a technophile but I do know there are easier ways of contacting people you are sorry to be bothering than turning up at their front door in a crimson Lamborghini during The Jeremy Kyle Show. Just as the appearance of a rival CEO unannounced at the office of a business competitor means a hostile bid – or at least it did in Uncle Percy’s case – so the arrival out of the blue of a senior Silk at his Head of Chambers’ home means one of two things: the News of the World has just given him advance notice of next Sunday’s headline (“Top Lawyer and the 3 in a bed romp!”) or he is leaving chambers for greener pastures.
I am glad for Rico’s sake, as I have always liked him, that it was the latter. We went to the only place to eat breakfast, in Green Park, and I toyed with Eggs Benedict as Rico tried to tell me his reasons. I say tried, because I had the strong suspicion he was speaking in code whereby I was meant to take his words and convert them to the opposite meaning. For instance, he said: “I want you to know it’s not you…I fully understand why I couldn’t have a room to myself…Hewart Chambers isn’t a better set than ours…Money isn’t everything, but I have a large family and the property in Ireland and it’s getting tough for me…I don’t mind doing some publicly funded work…I shall miss you all terribly.”
By the time I had reached my third round of delicious hot buttered toast and exotic jams, I felt a strange pulsating feeling around my heart region. Was this the end: beaten, bowed, humiliated, dead in my favourite breakfast haunt? Would I be thrown in the back of the difficult-to-maintain arterial coloured car, with the plates RIC 0, and taken to the nearest morgue? Would my Inn give me a memorial? Was I wearing clean… In fact, I had put my mobile on “vibrate” to avoid interruption, and rather foolishly placed it in my inside breast pocket.
I had four texts that had come just as the battalions to which Claudius referred. FONE CHAMBERS SOONEST (Andrew), I AM HEARING ODD RUMOURS (Paddy – a semi-detached member who is always weeks behind the news), EXTRORDINARY GENERAL MEETING THURSDAY AT 6pm – BE THERE! (a circulating text not presumably meant for me) and REMINDER FROM YOUR DENTIST – MR LIU 2HRS - UL CROWN 9AM TOMORROW.
As I waved goodbye and good wishes to Rico’s exhaust fumes, Hamlet was replaced by Macbeth in my mind:
“Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
Gone − my summer of blue skies and a light Mediterranean spray refreshing my Factor 50 protected skin…there was going to be a real, no-holds-barred row and my Headship now hinged on the equivalent of a No Confidence vote in the House of Commons. Or, as Andrew so helpfully put it when we talked later that day: “Oh well, sir – one down, fifty-four to go.”
William Byfield is the pseudonym of a senior member of the Bar. Gutteridge Chambers, and the events that happen there, are entirely fictitious.
16 July 2009: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies But in battalions” – Hamlet.
Our call for sufficient resources for the justice system and for the Bar to scrutinise the BSB’s latest consultation
Marie Law, Head of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, discusses alcohol testing for the Family Court
Louise Crush of Westgate Wealth explains how to make sure you are investing suitably, and in your long-term interests
In conversation with Matthew Bland, Lincoln’s Inn Library
Millicent Wild of 5 Essex Chambers describes her pupillage experience
Louise Crush of Westgate Wealth explores some key steps to take when starting out as a barrister in order to secure your financial future
From a traumatic formative education to exceptional criminal silk – Laurie-Anne Power KC talks about her path to the Bar, pursuit of equality and speaking out against discrimination (not just during Black History Month)
Inspiring and diverse candidates are being sought for the Attorney General’s Regional A, B and C Panels - recruitment closes at noon on 10 October 2024
Expectations, experiences and survival tips – some of the things I wished I had known (or applied) when I was starting pupillage. By Chelsea Brooke-Ward
If you are in/about to start pupillage, you will soon be facing the pupillage stage assessment in professional ethics. Jane Hutton and Patrick Ryan outline exam format and tactics
In a two-part opinion series, James Onalaja considers the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s requests for arrest warrants in the controversial Israel-Palestine situation