By the way | On your marks...

I know a number of people wondering how they will fill the void in their evenings after the loss of their daily Olympics fix over the past week.

I was one of the lucky people to be allocated tickets in the original public ballot, so my family went to an evening athletics session on the final weekend. The experience was truly amazing. The weather was obligingly glorious, the stadium was awesome and all contact with event staff from the 'games maker' volunteers to the uniformed soldiers on security was upbeat and jovial.

We meandered through the throngs of people in a leisurely fashion while soaking up the atmosphere and pausing at various distractions en route, including face painting for the children and mobile one-man beer bars for the grown-ups. Our seats were right at the top, directly above the Olympic flame, and from there we watched finely tuned athletes pole vaulting, hammer throwing and running their way to glory as we ate a picnic tea and the sun set on our capital's very impressive backdrop.

Taking the most of our weekend in London, we went the next day to watch Shrek the Musical, much to the children's delight. It was another thoroughly enjoyable evening, topped off by a rickshaw journey back to our uber-cool Pimlico apartment, which was kindly lent us by some friends. As far as my daughters were concerned, the ride home was a definite highlight of their weekend, and must represent the best taxi fare ever spent. They are also now adept at striking both the lightning Bolt and Mobot poses which prolifically adorned the papers, so retain that handy skill in addition to their rickshaw memory as tokens of their once-in-a-lifetime weekend!

Normality resumes

I am having no trouble filling the post-Olympic gap in my life '“ a never-ending stream of meetings and mediations is doing that for me. As of next week, I will have had four mediation cases in as many weeks.

Two settled within days of each other last month, to include costs, which means that all parties can shortly close their files and move on to other matters. Both cases saw me 'playing away' at the opponent's offices. The days passed smoothly, with no spleen venting or shouting by any parties, and only a small curve-ball thrown in the opening session of one mediation as the claimant's barrister announced that he ?read this column each month and will keep an eye out for any mentions, so here is his real test.

He went on to say that he'd read my recent rantings about certain firms adopting bullying tactics in order to bring opponents to the negotiating table, and that he hoped his legal team was not in that category. It obviously pays to watch what one writes. Incredibly, both cases concluded within normal working hours to include the negotiation and signature of settlement agreements, which is, in my experience, virtually unheard of at mediations.

I will soon be dreaming of mediation position statements, as I am currently finalising two more in preparation for another very busy week starting on Monday. It seems that all mediators ask for them a week in advance as standard but most parties end up producing them only a couple of working days in advance. Many firms are averse to providing the information which the mediators request for their preparation, including basic details such as the level of their costs, which is pretty important if you are the claimant and really want to settle the case on the day. Secrecy is rather pointless if you are ultimately going to expect defendants to produce a cheque.

I can't even blame anyone else for my hectic schedule, as in all of my recent cases I have been in charge of my own diary and have thus knowingly booked these appointments in. I have at least learned from my negative experience earlier in the year when two without prejudice meetings ended up taking place literally back to back. Never again.

My finalised cases are being replaced on a seamless basis with new ones. I emailed the office from my latest mediation to report on the fact that we were almost settled, and received the response that there would be a new accountant's negligence claim awaiting my return. I also received a new solicitor's matter which required an almost immediate Acknowledgement of Service due to the time lag in proceedings being brought to insurers' attention, so there was some beetling around on that to keep me out of trouble also.

Returning to my original theme, I mentioned last month that numerous colleagues were participating in an Olympic torch bike ride relay around the firm's UK offices. There was, as predicted, some appallingly bad weather for the brave participants to contend with. In addition, one of the Manchester team had an ?accident on her way in to the office for the start of the leg to Sheffield, resulting in no less than eight fractures to her right shoulder. Wishing her a speedy recovery, the remaining team members carried on ?to achieve their ambitious target in these austere times of raising £10,000 for ?the firm's charity, War Child. Well ?done everyone.