Today was the day that the new Queen’s Counsel were made up. The Temple was full of shiny black vehicles carrying men and women dressed like this:
The patent leather shoes with silver buckles are, I think you will agree, cutting edge. Each new silk (As QCs are known – after the material that their gowns are made of) holds a party and at this time of the year one’s desk is thick with invitations on heavy card. The tradition is to move from one gathering to the next, politely sipping champagne and liberally doling out the congratulations. As each drink slips down the whole thing seems less absurd and the congratulations become more effusive until by the end of the evening the “big wig” is being dropped on a dog’s head and drunken millionaire commercial silks are recounting their school days to junior solicitors too polite to dart away or lapse into unconsciousness.
At the moment I am engulfed in the most hideous case I have ever encountered. Were it not for the fact that the Bar Council would grate my privates like nutmeg if I so much as breathed a word about it on this blog I would have such stories to tell … I decided, therefore, to attend only one party. It was held in the Sir John Soane Museum (one of my very favourite places) on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Surrounded by leather-bound books and looted Grecian artefacts I mingled and small-talked till I could bear no more. A friend and I resolved to leave and whilst he fetched his coat I stood outside in the autumn evening.
A man approached me, fresh from the soup kitchen in the North East corner of the fields. “So” he said, apparently already in mid-sentence “you must be careful”
“Excuse me?”
“One of de mummers is missink”
“Murmurs?”
“Mummies, de Egyptians, there is one of dem aroun here. It has escaped!”
“Oh dear, well you be careful then”
“Do you know museums?”
“I know some museums”
“I am from Hungary. When I am dere I work in a museum. We have no mummy but we have a giant” He raises his hands dramatically into the air.
“An d’you know what?”
“No”
“He had a two foot long willy! What do you think to dat?!”
“I think I am going to have trouble getting to sleep to night with that image in my head.”
With that we parted company. He seemed satisfied his work was done and I shuffled away to the station and for home.
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