Back to reality

September is now somehow upon us, meaning that the nights will soon be swiftly drawing in, leaves will turn to beautiful autumnal shades of orange and brown and the morning roads will once again be crammed full of Cheshire/Chelsea tractors doing the school run. I will be reclaiming my seat on the tram to read my free newspaper and listen to the radio in a delightful little commuter bubble rather than endure the high blood pressure-inducing traffic jam which my alternative route to work becomes during term time.

It also means that the main holiday season is over and many people are returning to work refreshed and ready for the long haul to our next bank holiday, which is not until 27 December. Some are more rejuvenated than others having had the luxury of a lengthy break or the opportunity to fully recharge their batteries somewhere sunny. However, they too must embrace reality at some point '“ how else will they fund the next exotic escape?

Several members of my team at work have spent much of 2010 so far embroiled in just one case. I only spent a couple of days assisting with their mammoth electronic disclosure task, but have lived and breathed it with them for far longer as it is one of those all-consuming matters which disables all other possible topics of conversation. It finally culminated in June with a five-week trial. You would be forgiven for thinking that it's now all boxed off and concluded neatly, potential appeals aside, but no. There has not even been an indication of when judgment is likely to be handed down. We estimate that it will be late October at the earliest, but it could take considerably longer. The lengthiest wait for a judgment I have heard of was 15 months. That is quite staggering.

So, what can cause such a hiatus? In our case the judge was due to take a month's holiday shortly after the trial finished. He will presumably have a full case list once normality resumes, meaning that the time required to read back into realms of notes and immerse oneself in pre-holiday thoughts before taking a deep breath and putting pen to paper will of necessity be slotted around an already full schedule.

Two of my clients, respectively an accountant and a solicitor, informed me in July that they would be taking the whole of August off. However, they each also told me that they would be contactable for at least part of the month, which I consider to be contradictory. Ultimately it seems that the accountant's wife agreed with me, as he sent a message at the end of his first week away to say that he would be entirely incommunicado for seven days because on his wife's insistence they were having an email embargo.

Living for the weekend

My family took our main holiday back in June so I worked as normal throughout most of the summer. We kept the weekends interesting, participating in Manchester's Skyride at the beginning of August where only bikes are allowed into the city and cars are banned, providing free rein to explore from a very different and more leisurely perspective.

We also camped at the inaugural Just So Festival, a children's event in Leek, Staffordshire. There were plenty of activities including a chance to chat with the fairy queen, a free funfair, a lantern parade and even some bands in true festival-style. There was also plenty of mud thanks to the largely vile weather, with the only other downside being the parents who decided to practice controlled crying with their toddler at 3am, which basically meant ignoring it completely despite its ear-splitting cries. They clearly forgot (or didn't care) that they were in a field full of other sleeping families. We nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have already booked tickets for next year.

Information overload

One holiday extremist is the client contact in my highest value case, who has jacked in the UK altogether and gone to work abroad as a resort manager. I have been investigating the claim's circumstances for months now, speaking with his former colleagues and tracking down papers around the country. It became more and more apparent that he alone will, hopefully, have the answers I seek to defend the multi-million pound claim. However, nobody could supply his current contact details. Even an enquiry agent in his new home country came back empty handed. I resorted to using a well-known search engine and came up trumps with his Facebook page.

He has not protected much of his information, so I learned in a couple of clicks various facts about his family life and his interests, and most importantly from my point of view the names of the small village in which he now resides and his employer. One call to them gave me the holy grail of his mobile number and the rest will hopefully soon be history, as he has promised to assist.

My advice to anyone who becomes disillusioned with their local climate/job/home life and decides to disappear would be not to splurge a mass of information which virtually includes precise latitudinal coordinates on an unprotected section of a social networking site. Technophobes may now take a moment to feel vindicated.

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