The curse of Sally Webster… or Strangeways Here We Come

Cor Chief! Someone’s only gone and redesigned the blog site! Now regular readers (if there can be such a thing, considering that I am an irregular writer in a whole variety of ways) will suspect that obviously this design jiggery-pokery has been done by me. However, credit where it is due, I have to notify you all that TS had more than a little involvement.

There, that should reassure her pretty little head.

Ok… well there have been some pretty huge lifestyle changes recently, and more to come. However, I can’t quite be arsed to run through them in detail here. All I’ll say is that TS has a new job, and I will be starting one myself very soon. In fact, I have just stumbled across the letter confirming that they have offered me the job, so it’s now definitely not a cruel joke… unless it’s a REALLY cruel joke.

I digress. Life is changing, and that’s all good.

I am, however, just recovering from the worst day so far as a solicitor. And it all happened in the cradle of industrial civilisation that is Manchester. Professional life in Leicester is so slow, that we kind of have to take on pretty much anything that we can get Legal Aid for. That means that I was able to blast back up the M6, and spend a ridiculous amount of (non-billable) time sat on my arse looking at the indoor palm tree at Manchester Magistrates Court, waiting to deal with a breach of curfew case.

So let’s summarise so far
Trips to Manchester 3
Hours on motorway (admittedly outside office hours)- 12
Hours suffering numb-arse syndrome on corrugated iron benches: 6+
Time chasing Securicor’s untrained (or house broken) chimps to get any evidence: eternity (or so it felt)
Time arguing the case over 3 seperate hearings- 2 1/2

Time taken for 3 magistrates to totally ignore everything I told them and send my client to HMP Manchester for 10 weeks- 5 poxy minutes.

Oh yes… now I feel good about my skills!

I suppose it had to happen eventually, that a bench would not only piss on my arguments but I’d end up having to go down and see someone in the cells. Still… I am officially still undefeated in the midlands.

At times like this, it’s important to rationalise and evaluate your advocacy performance without feeling like a deflated baloon. Accordingly, I have identified the cause of this unmitigated disaster. Cosmic forces were called into force by the fact I was in the queue for a sandwich behind Sally Webster from Coronation Street. For those with no idea what I’m on about, I refer to a fairly dull character in an incredibly dull soap that’s filmed in Manchester.

For the record, she was not only buying some kind of salad with prawns in it, but she was paying the extra so eat in. Show-off!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Daily life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.