PI Brief Update

FootInMouthDisease

Went to a solicitors’ drinks party last night and was all good until I stumbled across the especially boring senior partner of the firm who managed to corner me for a good twenty minutes about how important his firm was to chambers. In the end I just had to escape and made it to the serving area for some fresh air and away from the stench of smug drunken legalese.  “If that man over there has the same effect on me as he has on his opponents, I’m sure he could bore them all into settling just to save themselves from having to listen to him again,” I said to the two waitresses who were also clearly taking a sneaky break.
“Er, yes. Well, that’s one way of putting it,” replied one of the waitresses.

Maybe it was the champagne or maybe it was simply because he was so dreadful but I ploughed on with more: “One way of putting it? Boy oh boy, if boring people to death was an Olympic sport he’d be its very own Steve Redgrave.”
“Well, er, that might be going a little far,” said the waitress again.
“A legend in his own time. The undisputed heavyweight, yes definitely heavyweight, champion of the world in boring the socks off anyone in his firing line.”
“Well, I see, er…”
“Anyway, enough of him. I’m BabyBarista. What are your names?”
“Well my name is June Dawson and this here is er, well, it’s er Liz Hatton.”

A little penny started dropping in my mind. Slowly at first. Hatton, Hatton, Hatton. Sounded familiar. Then it all seemed like slow motion. Hatton….The name of the senior partner… “Er…no relation I hope?” I tailed off as I said it, not looking at all hopeful.
“I’m his wife,” and with that she stormed off and she left me standing and fretting as to whether my foot in mouth disease had scuppered chambers’s lucrative line of work with this particular firm of solicitors. As I hovered between coming up with an awkward apology and on the other hand simply letting it lie, it was fear and inertia that got the better of me and I eventually left quietly and most definitely in shame.

Not, it has to be said, my best day so far.

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.