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.

Candy Floss Bed Linen

Crushed Raspberry Bed Linen

I'm no iron lady as anyone who's read some of these posts will know, but today I needed to iron a sheet, it being a lovely sunny day with the linen on the line; who'd have ever thought we'd be celebrating hanging the washing out to dry.  Ironing a sheet is a job to be got over quickly. I found the equipment in Cost Centre #1's penthouse, 'I'll have this done in no time,' I say, and look around for a glass of water to top up the iron. Half way through the job, I get a sickly strawberry sherbet pong, then the iron starts to get sticky and brown bubbly caramel dribbles forth. Yikes, bloody flavoured water, just think what it's doing to your insides CC #1!

The sheet smells of cheap bubblegum, I've heard of fruit flavoured condoms, but sticky candy floss sheets - I don't think they'll catch on.

And the reason I haven't got around to writing a post all week is literary;  literally, reading a book for review, which I'll end up half reviewing here if I'm not careful, whereas it can be read soon in the Sindo. I'm also continuing to axe thousands of words to fit my novel into competition criteria. I'm saving them to put somewhere else, after the weeks of solitude it took to write them in the first place.

The review and editing were supposed to be done last weekend when I went for a quiet retreat to my friend in Wicklow. We shall call her Victoria, not after Beckham, or even Secret, but Grayson, from Revenge, only because she's looks a bit like Madeleine Stowe and has the figure to go with it. Victoria's husband, Baron von Richter Scale was checking out pistons in some romantic Spanish location with his fellow petrol heads. There was nothing for it but to stay in with her and cook, gossip, read, gossip, sleep, gossip and er, drink a bottle or six of wine. And even though I've a cat phobia, I managed to relax enough not to squeal in fright at the thought of her creature touching me.

Ah yes, the silence, the bird song, the distance, a great retreat, but still the book review isn't finished.  And on Sunday afternoon we have to curtail the rural idyll to visit our friend who's displaying her new baby furniture at the Pregnancy and Baby Fair. As you can imagine, Victoria and I are far from interested in anything that might be purveyed but it's important to support our friend. We arrive an hour before it ends and take a quick scoot around the stands looking for her. We pass the Mount Carmel Hospital stand and a myopic woman hands us both a leaflet and asks us to think of them when we're having our next child. At least she didn't presume we were pregnant. Victoria was horrified, I said we should be flattered - Non?

Next day I'm in hospital after my GP suggested I get the knee and thumb further checked. The only way to bear the waiting situation was to bring the book and enjoy the peace. It amazes me that 90% of patients who complain about the waiting in A&E, don't bring anything to pass the time. I hardly read a few pages when the nurse called me, then I settled in for another hour only the doctor called me within 10 minutes, then I thought maybe a few more pages only the radiographer called me. OK I had to wait a bit on a trolley to get all the results, but it was warm and comfortable.

A young girl, maybe late teens, sat nearby crying. She was wearing a fetching white sort of skater dress, ie, short and floaty, tanned limbs, candy floss nails,  french pedicure, I noticed this as she wasn't wearing any shoes. Her arm was in a sling. She sobbed so much I tried to think of something to comfort her, but when I looked again she was absorbed in  her phone. Her doctor listed a few things off to my doctor, words like Student Races, fall, alcohol. I conjured up images of the girl running in a sack race or maybe an egg and spoon race with a cocktail bar at the finish line.

My thumb was strapped into a velcro thing and I was told I should have been on crutches for the last three weeks, but it was too late now, the tear was mending, they said, just keep it rested. When I got home I told CCN#2 about the girl and asked if there were some student races in UCD today?

'No, mom they were in Leopardstown, horses, student tickets, er hello?'

'Oh, that explains the girls friends in the waiting area, all dressed up with fascinators.'

'What are fascinators?' he sniffs

'Ah, hello, look it up.'