You, dear readers, are the most sensitive and literate people I know. I need your help devising a neologism. I would like a word for the feeling that you get when you are watching the television and see that tomorrow night there will be an “undercover expose” centred on hideously expensive private IVF clinic that your wife has persuaded you to attend.
No word I presently know seems to quite cover it.
You may have noticed that I tend not to write about work (but then nor do most of you so stop pointing the finger). However, I would like to share a moment from court today.
I was against a litigant in person. He is a likeable (and skillful) former employee of a Bangladeshi Bank. As a leathery-winged agent of evil, I was representing the bank. We were in the High Court and my opponent commenced his submissions by saying:
“You will see that I am not a lawyer and I ask for your compassion”.
That was a pretty startling opening sentence as very few people have ever suggested that they deserve sympathy for not being a lawyer. However, it got odder still. His next sentence began:
“My Lord* I would like to tell you how we see you …”
At this, his lordship shifted uneasily in his seat. Normally one does not get to tell judges how one feels about them. In fact there is a specific offence – contempt of court – which is designed to ensure you do your best to remain obsequious and to deter your from expressing frankly your feelings about judges. Personally, I yield to no advocate in my willingness to kiss judicial rear. If it will cause the judge to look fondly on my client’s case I am prepared to test the suction-resistance of his lordly posterior to destruction. However, I have never gone quite as far as my opponent went today:
” … we see you as the living embodiment of the Lord God Almighty. Justice is in your hands and we hope his divine compassion will flow through you.”
The judge paused before responding:
“I’ll do my best”
* All High Court Judges get a knighthood but are then referred to, confusingly, as “my Lord” even though they are not peers. This all leads to a story told about F E Smith (a famous advocate) which it is just about possible one or two of you may not have heard. Smith, cross-examining a witness, asks:
“So, the Defendant was as drunk as a judge”
The outraged judge intervenes:
“You are in error, Mr Smith, it is ‘as sober as a judge’, what you mean to say is ‘as drunk as a Lord'”
Smith: “If you say so my Lord”.
It will disturb you to learn that barristers think that is hilarious.
You may have noticed something of a gap between posts. Partly this is because I have been playing here: http://moobz.vox.com. Mostly it is because I took on the challenge of a tag tossed at me by Emma. The challenge is to tell you 5 things about me that you do not know. Given that I have been blogging for a while now that is rather more easily said than done. What I have not spilt out here I have drizzled into comments left on other sites. Furthermore, some of you are either related to me or have been friends since school so it is unlikley that there is anything that I can reveal about myself which is not so scandalous that it would be likely to lead to expulsion, ex-communication or revoking of privileges. All I am willing to say therefore is that I have done my best. As usual I have gone on at length so that the answer will appear in two parts.
(1)Â My Real Name
It may come as a surprise but Moobs is not my real name. I have toyed with making it my real name but that would get in the way of my lifelong ambition to change my name to “Mr Deed Poll”. My real name is Seán.
Well, I tell a lie, in fact it isn’t but I’ll come back to that.
My mother, being from Dublin, was homesick when I was born and wanted to call her firstborn something that reminded her of home (I guess I am lucky she didn’t name me after Ireland’s premier fast food outlet: Abrakebabra).
Mum chose the gaelic form of the name and so began a lifetime of spelling my name to idiots. Here is a scene from childhood: I am lying in a hospital bed awaiting my appendectomy. On my head is a pair of disturbingly sticky heaphones through which I am listening to the sonic delights of Hospital Radio Colchester. HRC has only one song recorded after 1946:”Will You” by Hazel O’Connor in which a woman plaintively entreats her man to stick around and satisfy her needs rather than “just politely [saying] goodnight”. By this point I have heard that song 70 times. Everything else in the station library was either danced to by Fred Astaire or else sung by soldiers on troop ships. As the sedatives take hold I hear the following exchange between the two DJs:
DJ1: “Hot Dog! We have a request here for a SEEN in Ward 4 …”
DJ2: “Er, I don’t think it’s SEEN I think it is pronounced ‘SHORN'”
DJ1: “Well it says S.E.A.N like ‘bean'”
DJ2: “I’m pretty sure that it’s pronounced ‘SHORN'”
DJ1: “Whatever. I’m sure she’ll forgive me.”
DJ2: “Actually, I think it’s a boy’s …”
DJ1: “Here is Hazel O’COnnor with ‘Will You”.
As I was sedated I found I couldn’t gnash my teeth and punch things as I wished to. I was reduced to dribbling angrily. It was as a result of that that I founded “The International Brotherhood of Seans” back in 1993.
I said that I lied about my name and I did: my real name is not Seán. Instead, my real name is Séan as my own mother mispelled my name on the birth certificate putting the accent over the wrong letter. Bah!
(2)Â I am not English
Despite my bowler hat, furled umbrella and sock suspenders I am not actually English. I was born in South Africa. My parents emigrated there shortly before I was born. So I was squeezed bawling into the world in Durban. My father was a ship’s captain trying to become a pilot.
During the first 18 months of my life my experiences included steaming along the African coast in the ship my father commanded. I am told that I became so used to the roll of the ship that I was once found, having fallen from my bed, rolling back and forth across the cabin floor fast asleep. To me the idea of the voyage seems hopelessly romatic. Unfortunately, by the time I was capable of remembering anything about my day to day existence we had washed up in Gravesend in Kent, which was every bit as glorious as the name suggests. Gone was the sight of dolphins breaking the water at the bow only to be replaced with a view across the marshes to Tilbury power station.
One afternoon, back in my schooldays, I was sat in French class with Chaz Ward, one of the more humourless members of the teaching staff (a very exacting standard). We were reading a jolly passage about a parrot and an African villager packed full of racial stereotypes so egregious that they would these days undoubtedly lead to prosecution. After the passage had been read aloud, the textbook provided a number of comprehension questions. To my delight I heard my teacher call out my name and then ask “Etes-vous Africain?”. “Oui” I answered “Je suis Africain”. Chaz’s face darkened. “I have had enough of you insolence boy. Get out!”
Having been expelled from class I had to stand outside in the corridor and await a “talking to” when the lesson was over. I knew the drill and insolence was usually my downfall (except once where the problem was farting – but that is another story). I enjoyed the moment – not because I enjoyed being booted from class but because I knew that the moment I left the classroom a hand would go up and my fellow pupils would delight in informing the still fuming Chaz that my answer had been an entirely accurate one and that he had some major climbing down to do. He managed that task with an awe-inspiring lack of grace. That memory alone more than compensated for the many teenage years I spent crapping myself that the South African Army might decide that I had to spend sometime shooting at people by way of military service.