PI Brief Update

Beyond redemption

At chambers tea today BusyBody asked OldSmoothie, ‘Why are you always so rude to UpTights?’

‘Because she’s a calcified witch,’ said he replied without even blinking. ‘Her heart’s turned to stone and whatever soul she had wasn’t able to survive in the bitterness and bile that pumps through her veins.’

‘But you’ve got to admit that you simply enjoy being nasty,’ said TheCreep.

‘Oh do give it up, won’t you,’ said OldSmoothie. ‘You young ones are all the same. So full of wide-eyed hypocrisy that you don’t even realise that you fell off the cliff years ago and there’s no going back now. You can carp all you like but as sure the sun goes up and, in UpTights’ case, down one day in, er…’ he coughed, ‘…twenty years time, you’ll wake up and realise that you’ve turned into us, whether you like it or not.’

Then he looked at TheCreep and gave a cruel smile and pointed at him and said, ‘Although, that’s not to say you’re going to suddenly start growing, in case you’re wondering.’

By now he had an audience and he continued the lecture, ‘You’ve already set your trajectory. You just don’t realise it yet. You won’t until it’s far too late. Just like they used to warn you about the wind changing when you were a child. I mean whatever might be in those oh so earnest little hearts of yours you’re never going to be some sort of UN Goodwill Ambassador or win a Nobel Prize. You’re never going to climb Mount Everest or even simply live by the sea, get a dog and write a novel. So wake up kids and smell the stink of your lost dreams which left town when you signed up for law school and boarded the cop out I-want-to-be-rich train of hypocrisy.’

There was silence.

Immediately after chambers tea I was walking back to our room with OldRuin and he said, ‘Don’t you believe a word of what OldSmoothie says, BabyB. There’s always hope. Right up to the end and never let him tarnish those dreams with that terrible jaded cynicism that reflects only on him.’

BabyBarista is a fictional account of a junior barrister written by Tim Kevan. You can buy the latest BabyBarista novel, 'Law and Peace' on Amazon. The cartoons are by Alex Williams, author of The Queen's Counsel Lawyer's Omnibus.