Bon Vivant

Old friends lead to reflections and regrets about old times. 

January 12, 2013:  "Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be." - Peter De Vries  

The usual January panic is upon me. Returning to work in the first part of January is always depressing and I had some days to make up as a Recorder. 

“The lights are beginning to go out for some, including the most able, all over the Temple - and not just the Christmas ones” 

December 7, 2012: “A fool may be known by six things: anger without cause; speech without profit; change without progress; inquiry without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends” - Arabian Proverb 

There is something wonderfully reassuring about public inquiries. First, we have a scandal; then we have embarrassed politicians who desperately want to kick the problem into the long grass; next there is the high-ranking judge lured into the public arena together with an army of barristers and solicitors; this is followed by months of public hearings where some advocates achieve minor cult status for a very short time and then, after a delay of weeks, months or sometimes years we get the report. Finally, we have the politicians’ response, in which they agree to do anything a clever civil servant could have told them to do in the first place and resolutely refuse to do that which they had no intention of doing from the kick-off. Predictably, whilst our courts fall apart around us and the facilities deteriorate below those of a run-down housing estate and the legal profession is squeezed and browbeaten, there is always plenty of money for these public circuses of utter pointlessness. 

Joseph Giret QC took time away from the Bar to compete in the Haute Route on behalf of Parkinson’s UK. He describes his journey ...  

Charity is a vital part of oiling otherwise creaking joints in our society and community at all levels, including bursaries on the one hand and the sick and needy on the other. Charity works with business today on an unprecedented scale; it is a valuable partnership for a business because of its positive projection. Charity begins at home for sure, but most assuredly ends with the business end of finding the cash. This is my story of a fundraising campaign I ran on behalf of the charity Parkinson’s UK. It was a season-long, full-on bike racing campaign to raise as much funding as possible and to raise awareness of Parkinson’s. 

Sean Jones QC and Professor Dominic Regan review the wines on offer this Christmas.  

We are back with a range of recommendations again. Not a dud amongst them. Last year we saw every major supermarket chain run a “ Buy 6 get 25% off” promotion and the serious buyer should look to swoop on these deals. 

Chambers’ security arrangements come under scrutiny 

November 12, 2012: “James Bond: The writing is on the wall. Q: Along with the rest of him.” Ian Fleming  

After the magic of Henrietta Briar-Pitt’s wedding to Ernst Pennington, we have now all been brought back to earth by autumn rain and the start of the new legal year with even less work at even worse rates. All we have to look forward to is quality assessment where some old judge will extract his revenge for some ancient perceived slight in a Siberian robing room by marking you down as fit only to defend guilty shoplifters. I cannot work because Mrs Ernst Pennington (nee Briar-Pitt) has departed to the French Riviera on her honeymoon and some unknown person has locked away all the files pertaining to the case of R. v. Grimble, my next major outing in the Criminal Division. 

Author: Nick Chambers QC
ISBN: 9780955657689
Publisher: OblongCreative Ltd
Published: October 2012
Price: £19.95 Hardback  

Alternative histories are usually gloomy affairs, the dystopic visions of writers in their garrets conjuring “what if” scenes of Nazis marching triumphantly up Whitehall, Czars enthroned in the White House or the lack of scientific progress under an all-powerful, unreformed Papacy. 

A joyous occasion is marred by a spectre at the feast  

October 8, 2012: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley” - Robert Burns  

I had hoped that my junior, Miss Henrietta Briar-Pitt would be working on the looming case of R. v. Jason Grimble, alleged co-murderer of Britain’s least popular former circuit judge, Claude Allerick, who was shortly to be tried at the Central Criminal Court by Claude’s successor from the judicial charisma by-pass section. Instead of which, I was ensconced in her equestrian pile, due to give her away to Mr Justice Pennington, batchelor knight, until, that is, recent dietary indiscretions caused a parting of her garments at an eve-of-wedding supper, prompting an apparent withdrawal from the nuptial event. 

Sam Blom-Cooper and Francesca Delany escaped the Bar for a year to cycle across Europe and Asia to Cambodia. Here they report back to  Counsel 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” – Not the exasperated plea of a Head of Chambers nor the disapproving words of a concerned Senior Clerk, when informed of our plans to cycle across the world for a year, but the words of a somewhat over-sized and sweaty border-guard, patrolling the Iran-Turkmenistan frontier that marks the gateway to more than 500km of Karakum Desert sands. Our friendly immigration official seemed equally bemused, however, by our declining his offer of 8am shots of vodka as he was by our choice to head out onto the lonely and already melting desert highway. By 9:30am the thermometer would be nudging 50°C. Sticky tarmac and absurd heat notwithstanding, at least Francesca was now freed of the uncomfortably hot, conservative attire that crossing Iran had entailed. 

A. Hayden QC, HHJ J. Penna, M. Allman, S. Greenan, E. Latvio
ISBN: 978 1 84661 319 7
March 2012
Publisher: Jordan Publishing
Price: £55

Children and same sex families (Family Law, Jordan Publishing 2012) by Anthony Hayden QC, Marisa Allman, Sarah Greenan, Elina Nhinda-Latvia and Judge Jai Penna highlights the many complexities which arise from same sex couples becoming parents.  The very meaning of parenthood is being re-evaluated in courts dealing with same sex couples, especially if such couples have an arrangement with a sperm donor or a surrogate mother. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) does away with the old presumption that a biological parent is, in fact, a legal parent, as the book’s fascinating chapter on parenthood shows in detail.  

Whether preparing for a case or a wedding, the best laid plans... 

September 9, 2012: “People only see what they are prepared to see.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Human beings seemingly spend a vast proportion of their lives preparing for things, only to find that when the event occurs they are, in fact, wholly unprepared. It is a perpetual theme of the Criminal Procedure Rules that we are all to spend endless amounts of time before a trial getting prepared, but which of us has ever arrived at court to find our opponents and co-counsel beaming and ready to go, our clients happy that they have told us all we need to know and a judge in command of the situation, only waiting to fire the starting gun? You may get some of it. You never get all of it. In fact, the more the case might seem to be suitable for such careful forethought, the more that chaos will intrude: the last-minute service of evidence, the lay client who starts sending you notes for the first time half-way through the initial witness, people who turn up to court with some file that has never previously seen the light of the day from which crucial nuggets fly forth – or not as the case may be.