That was so TwentyThirteen

Farewell Thirteen

When I started this blog 365 days ago I didn’t think I’d survive until today with the new lodging arrangements. 
Sadly, my first man, Adam, is leaving me after a year of harmonious absence and the applications are rolling in for his room. 

Once again, I have to think about people in a way one never wants to, picking at personality traits that might set your teeth on edge or wondering at their bathroom usage. 

I can’t put it in the ad, but it’s only open to males, as they have to share a bathroom with my sons, who keep it surprisingly tidy. But still, I could be sued if I advertised for men only. Or could I? In contract law, is it an offer or an invitation to treat? Will their consideration be considerate or considered? In land law, will I be licensing the use of a room or providing a benefit – this was much easier when I was legally ignorant. 

In January '13 I certainly didn’t think I’d have covered first year Law by now, seeing as I only applied online after a few drinks with some barristers and decided I could do that job. Driving to lectures every night was the least appealing prospect, but that’s turned out to be a great way to dissect the day. Only problem is food havoc, not only eating before and after lectures, but snacking on jellybabies during them. 

Some male friends were perplexed at my decision; they thought it was absolutely bonkers ‘at my age’ and ‘what was the point?’ Lectures are a great pleasure, law touches every part of our lives and it's fulfilling to learn something new. Yet brushing with the law is what most of us avoid, while others live by litigation. 

That's all great, but then the first exam day came, and I knew what those men meant. The fear of the blank page, the trick questions, the memory failure, the fact that I might have studied all the wrong stuff. The big hall, the rules, the silence, the scarified looks. Then it was all over, and I had a cramp from writing for two hours, having done all the things we were warned not to, putting down anything that came into my head.

Is it any wonder I haven’t blogged in two months? That, and a defamation suit if I write about my student colleagues or, worse the lecturers. I even did a mooting competition, a mock trial, giving full expression to someting I only practiced on my children before, arguing that I am in the right...

The one thing about the legal world is it isn’t ageist, as such. People practice well into their seventies (I'm being very optimistic). The revered, former Supreme Court judge, Catherine McGuinness, qualified as a barrister at 42, that’s still young as far as I’m concerned. 

So when it came to the King’s Inns Christmas Ball I thought a good cross section of the class would go, not so. And being prevailed upon to go by the younger socialites, I just had to dust off the ball gown and tiara and step back into the 19^th century ballroom.  Then it was the vengabus to a nightclub til the early hours, gosh it’s fun being out with 20-50 year olds in tuxedos and gowns with one thing in common, exam anxiety.

So, once more into the breach we go, after a year that started in trepidation, living with strangers, coming 'out' about D v. Ireland, getting book reviews and opinion published, becoming a legal student, I know 2014 will be another hard slog for all of us, but we’ll get there yet. Please let it be soooooonnnnnn!!

The Bank Blog - Intimate Relations

Not long ago it was only tech giants like Dell pulling out of Ireland because of the high wage cost, but now the banks, those cushy numbers with money to burn, so to speak. Or is that bondholders not to burn?

Never mind, the fact that two banks with which I had intimate relations are leaving my life says it all, the bigger my intimate relations the greater the betrayal. Note to self: get things in perspective.

Zebra print jeans from 'No Romance', pity about the pint

I had a summer job in ACC in my teens. It is my only claim to working in a bank and a pin on a circuit board could do my job a million times faster now. I was one of about ten in the filing department. All we did was roam up and down the aisles of files whispering, gossiping and misfiling. It was my first introduction to life outside the convent; the filing department was a place for people with no training in anything other than the alphabet. I met my first gay man, there was an art student who talked about nude modelling and sex, there was a Northern Ireland militant woman, probably lesbian, but there were only rumours that they really existed then, it was gloriously colourful. That was the year of Michael Jackson's ‘Rock with You’, Queen's ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and the one and only truly fabulous Blondie ‘Call me’, and she's still performing, Blonde Power.

That filing department was where many bank managers began, no doubt there were similar cases in other banks, and when they all grew up they lent lots and lots of money, like billions that they didn’t have, because they weren’t exactly trained in finance or economics (this is just a theory, but a good one). So that is why when the young people in the filing department and the untrained governance people in politics all grew up, we had a catastrophic meltdown that hurt all the other people in the country that weren’t property developers. Which all comes back to me writing a landlady blog and having two strange men roam about my house, along with two very familiar sons, who for the rest of their lives I’m likely to see little of, as they emigrate along with all their highly educated peers. Leaving us with the filing department to run the country again.

My intimate relationship with Danske Bank is slightly more grown up but we’ve grown apart slowly as the account dried up, the distance makes the break a little easier. In the nineties, when I’d had enough of being an employee, having to ask my boss for a couple of hours off to get home to a sick baby and him asking me what the au pair was for, I decided the only way forward was to work for myself, then I could be a stickler for time and never give myself holidays. I opened an account in what was then National Irish and was looked after by Christine, the most personable female manager of any institution I’ve encountered. She was interested in my work (I was an interior designer when there were only ten in the Golden Pages), smoothed out problems and made things happen, she was a real voice; as alien a thing in today’s telephone button banking, as my time in filing.

Now I’m a student again, bringing sandwiches into college, I’ve got to find fees for the next three years and that’s how the Credit Union came into my life, I’m just one step away from buying savings stamps in the post office. Oh No. I feel like I’m in the eighties again, without the figure. Time to dust off my jumpsuit and grab my headband, ‘don’t leave me haaaanging on the telephoooonnnne’

The facts of the matter are, er, em...

The Hallowe'en Kids 1994, sob

It was the born again moment, when in a slow dawning the class realised that all our random, roaming, tangential thinking patterns would have to be erased; we were now being trained as 'legal minds'

The tallest man in the class put his head in his hands and cried 'I want to leave this course.'

Sitting at four tables, facing into little groups, some well experienced, skilled people kept coming up with the wrong answers, 'but, but, but, what if?' we cried.

'No, no, no.' She in the black regalia repeated.

'Don't get seduced by the facts, what do you have to remember?'

Blank faces all round.

'La, la, la,' she hinted.

Somebody hesitantly suggested, 'Law'.

'Cor-rect,' she hissed.

Terrible thing, I am now dreaming in law-speak and find myself starting sentences with 'the facts of the case are'. 

Bewilderment is a great bond, this mixed bag of a class are going to the local pub for a Hallowe'en fancy dress party on Friday, enthusiastically. And you should see the local pub. Scary even when it's not Hallowe'en.

And in a happily accidental change in reading pleasure, I'm enjoying American legal theory. My prodigal lodger came back from a long odyssey and is already gone on another one. He was here long enough to introduce me to Jack Reacher. I told him my head was numb from law books and he reckoned if his classics-oriented wife liked 'One Shot' then I would too.

So, I have Jack Reacher in bed, as have millions of women before me, yet he's still refreshing. The only thing about Kindle, I can't even stroke the page, safe text guaranteed.

Never look a Bird Crap in the Mouth

Quite dashing for a former Bond

One day last week I was walking my dog on the way to visit a friend and bring her some medicine, so far so Florence Nightingale. Said dog and I don't get much in the way of exercise these days so we were killing two birds so to speak. Next thing, I feel this wet plop on my nose, there was no sign of rain, it could only be an aforementioned feathered effluent discharger. I gave out to the dog as the cost centres weren’t about, wiped it with my hand and carried on. There is a certain wanton liberty leaving the house without tissues, something you’d never do while you’re children are under eighteen. 

I carried on and wondered what a scientist would make of it, two objects travelling in different directions at different speeds, one poos and manages to land it on the nose of the other.

I arrived at Racquel’s door with the medicine, she looked at me more pityingly than I thought the occasion demanded, her being the sick one and me taking the air.

‘Oh it must’ve been a bird,’ she exclaimed.

‘How did you know?’

I looked down and saw the remainder of its bowel contents sprayed down my jacket. I couldn’t tarry for coffee or the like, as I had an interview to think about it.

‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ said the non-believer.

I thought of it, but didn’t dare pin any hope on it.

'Good Luck' when a bird craps on you. 

So I walked home, hurriedly of course, keeping my chin in the air and avoiding eye contact with the passersby who clearly thought I’d been in a gutter and vomited down my front. I felt the well-groomed dog lent an air of respectability.

I might add that the rest of my life depended on the success of this interview.

In between keeping landlady house intact, banks at bay, cost centres fed and schooled, I am lucky to have been given the chance to write occasionally for a newspaper, some of this involves reading books I don’t like and some I love. Some ‘opinion’ writing addresses very hard news. Recently, it has been pleasant, a biography of a great man, a novel on a historic figure, it’s sporadic but therapeutic and pays the ESB. The alarming thing I’ve discovered since going back to school is the cost of law books. Crikey. I mean, they only add a few pages every year to bring out a new edition and still charge 158 euro. The teachers say second-hand copies are useless, new judgment makes new law (note I’ve even learned to spell judgment their way).

I washed off the bird crap and went to the interview; as usual everybody else was younger and looked infinitely more qualified. It didn’t last very long, I put my life on pause and carried on to college.

There is one thing you can do, or at least I can do, that has the effect of a two-day anti-depressant, it’s called a blow-dry. I can make it last three days if the tribulations demand it. So it was I returned to my stalwart confidante, Jim Hatton in Ranelagh, on Friday morning for an infusion of feel-good.

Hope 'Penny Dreadful' will be Penny Wonderful

My phone rattled in my bag while the suds were being rinsed. I recognised the number and thought it best to get it over with, I went outside, hair dripping and phoned back. ‘We thought we’d get you out of your suspense’ I'd succeeded at the interview. I wanted to tell the woman I’d kiss her, though that wouldn’t do. Suffice to say now I can pay for my books.

This week our classes are amid a film set, a mini-series called Penny Dreadful with Timothy Dalton (dashing), Eva Green (smokes between takes), Billie Piper and Josh Hartnett (can't comment), I hope it's good, because they are going to incredible trouble and expense transforming Henrietta Street and the King's Inns into a nefarious Victorian corner of London.

After our first class outing at the very cool House on Leeson Street, I ended up in The George with another student, not the yacht club, the other one. I even got in with my new *freelance* press pass, I said I was writing a piece. So this is it: The George was, like, totally strange, but like, fun.

Legally Blonde aims for the Bar (on Leeson Street)

The idea of getting up early on Saturday morning to go to a tutorial on the other side of the city is a bit like getting up to change a baby's nappy in the middle of the night. You know you have to do it, but the timing isn't great. Having babies puts paid to hangovers, you quickly learn no night out is worth the agony. Amazing how you forget that when they grow beards and sleep until lunchtime.

It’s our first law tutorial and my shell-shocked self is still overflowing with enthusiasm and vowing not to miss a minute of this tidal wave of knowledge … might have overdone the metaphors there, but you get the gist.

Friend, Victoria Grayson-Beckham, invites me for supper the night before, ‘well I warn you, I’ll be in bed before midnight,’ I smugly confide, ‘can’t miss my first tutorial’. Her husband, Baron von Richterscale, is out for dinner with his petrol heads, so it’s a tête a tête a deux. Or was, until Alpha Romeo became available and joined us in Victoria's secret kitchen at the foothills of Wicklow. Fast forward to 4am and we are still up with the iPod disco in full swing. By 9.45 after a long drive I’m 15 minutes late, the class is split into groups, they’re talking manically about legal terms, I don’t know where to sit, my head aches, my eyes sting. I get a nod from lovely red-haired girl, the group brings me up to speed, when tutor, not knowing who is who, calls a random name from her sheet. ‘Deirdre, can you identify the crime and which is the appropriate court to deal with case ‘B’? I look around for another Deirdre in the room. My group stare expectantly. Isn’t it just typical, I’m out of school thirty years and still in trouble. One of the lads had mentioned ‘piracy’, I parroted, then a gallant young fella backed me up. I swear it won’t happen again.

Now in my second week at the new school, we had our first lectures in constitutional, contract and criminal law. To call them lectures is an understatement, introductions to a whole new world is more like it, delivered by the most entertaining men I’ve come across in a long time. After a few minutes my colleagues in the front row sat back, put down our pens and just listened in thrall. Constitution man warned us that Contract man was going to be boring and his course was the most important subject in the world. Contract man pointed out the plethora of Latin terms we’d have to know, noting that English ones were much easier but then we wouldn’t be able to confound the client with our complex knowledge. So now you know.

Just because...

I can’t ignore landlady house while aiming for the Bar, cost-centres still need to be fed and goaded into cleaning, gentlemen lodgers are incredibly invisible and my blog is suffering, all the while I’m reading books and writing reviews for a Sunday newspaper (to pay for my own school books). I’ve even interviewed a crime-fiction writer, a doctor who specialises in ghoulish cases, he insisted on buying me lunch and after two hours said he wished we could keep talking (I daren’t have told him it was my first interview) and most of what he told me couldn't be printed!

Tonight will be the fifth night in a row at school and the young ‘uns have organised a class outing to a new club in town. House in Leeson Street, am I going? After a 50^th birthday dinner last night for Mariella, literary queen, involving a mad dash across town to the deep south and a struggle to keep awake today, a Latin phrase springs to mind, Carpe Diem.