A Free Speech is an anagram of Cheaper Fees

Life is not a bowl of cherries, but these look nice anyway

I’m two thirds through the first year of landladyhouse and life as I know it is about to cease. The daunting prospect of two strangers living in our midst is ameliorated as the decent gentlemen lodgers are hardly ever here. From next week on I’ll be missing every evening too; the house will become a veritable sea with five ships passing in the night.

I came home one summer evening from an art gallery party with a load of barristers at it and decided I’d give that a go (the law, not the art). Seeing as I wasn’t getting anywhere on the interview circuit, while painstakingly editing a novel and writing book reviews, I still needed to find work for the rest of my life. I got accepted to King's Inns a few weeks ago and my induction is two nights from now. I’ve been quietly panicked over this as it draws nearer, what with two years of night study and a further full-time year after that, then the devilling. Maybe the bank will look on me benignly and help with fees or at least count me as a good debt when I come up for review. If I could barter my future services for sponsorship now I would, only there aren’t too many takers with that kind of confidence in me, or indeed moolah.

A cluster of barristers got together last week for the launch of Brian Cregan's first novel on Charles Stewart Parnell, I had read the book for review, for once I knew the subject well.
All the bits of Irish history I missed on account of the miserable nun that taught me, were retrieved and pieced into the very large jigsaw of the party split and goes some way to explain  ‘why we are where we are’. It's hard to believe the Education Minister is proposing the dumbing down of history in our schools.

On political parties, I was to have an audience with Justice Minister, Alan Shatter, and confide I had a first edition of his racy book, Laura,  but held back, that tête à tête will have to wait as I have more pressing things to ask him. 

A few days ago I went to the RHA and stood in a huge, crowded, humid room listening to Fr Tony Flannery at the launch of his book, A Question of Conscience, an insight into the Inquisition-like conditions that prevail in the Vatican. It’s hard to believe in our supposed enlightened times that he is silenced and threatened with excommunication for speaking out about corruption in his Church. I bumped into a senior counsel there and told him of my impending studies. 

'Ah you'll be looking for a master then,' he asserted. 
'A mistress will do too,' I helpfully suggested.

Luckily, for the rest of us, speech is free, that and air. That’s what I’m going to live on….