Time on our hands

Well what a week '¨of revelations: we have the bad news about VHCCs; that the rates are to be cut from April despite contracts on-going; and we have the news from the'¨Evening Standard that the '¨Bar is effectively a highly sexed profession that is at it like rabbits.

Which is more worrying, the imminent loss of a considerable part of one's income, or the uneasy sense that you are not as sexually active, indeed as adventurous as the rest of your colleagues. Now is it the case that, as I slip away from the wine bar or the pub, as soon as I have turned the corner to make my weary way home on the tube everyone says, "Right now he's gone, let's get on with it!" and all the action starts. Is it at that point that they are all going off to hotels or each other's flats and indulging in some highly intimate networking? Or is this all going on during the day, when say the trial cracks, or the jury is discharged and suddenly everyone has a lot of time on their hands and stops off at the Holiday Inn on the way home? Why has nobody asked me? It is not that I am that interested really, indeed fatigue and the enjoyment of a few quiet moments on my own with a good book is more appealing, but it is rather like a party you don't really want to go to; well, it would be nice to be asked.

I do remember that there was a certain amount of predatory behaviour back in the day, that the odd rogue was well known and warned against. But I don't remember any sense of it being some sort of swinging sixties type scene. When was everyone preparing their skeleton arguments and cross-examinations? We did not do it all on the train on the way to work. And as for one reference in the Evening Standard that it was a practice to do it while wearing one's new wig, well that one is lost on me. How the obliging other half of the act did not burst out laughing is beyond me. And laughter - just as in court - can really unman the prosecution, if you know what I mean.

So, if we are to have a lot of time on our hands as a result of there being no work left for us, I still doubt that we shall be filling our time with extra-curricular activities of that sort. I suppose it would be a way of making money, and that that would bring a whole new meaning to clerking, kite marks and things like chambers and partners annual awards for leaders in the profession. But that too fills me with gloom.

Now, what I do wonder is whether there is any market at all for me to sit around reading a good book, as it seems I shall have plenty of time to do that in the future. Any takers? Oh go '¨on - otherwise I might have to look elsewhere. SJ

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