Liadnan

.. and then he drinks another gin drink. And then another gin drink. And then another gin drink. And then starts feeling miserable about Everything.

Has anyone ever investigated precisely how it is that Gin does this?

But doesn't have a hangover and spends the next evening on 12 star Metaxa, a wonderful intoxicant that should be more widely appreciated.

In other news, via John and Belle the depressing proof that Bono is still kind of a cock. Depressing because I'd kind of rediscovered (old) U2 recently. Now I'm reminded how exactly he managed to reach quite so far up my nose.

Ah well.

Ian McDonald has a livejournal. And pretty much all of you who might be interested in this already knew this, and had subscribed. Can you explain why, precisely, no one saw fit to tell me?

And there's a new Lindsey Davis. I managed to stick to my moratorium, but my suspicion, that Greece was pretty much the only bit of Vespasian's empire she hadn't touched yet and was therefore the likely new Abroad setting, has proved correct.

You what?

I mean, I actually quite like Robbie. He makes oi laugh. But best British song of the last 25 years? My arse.

In other news, life is rubbish so I'm not going to write about it.

Good weekend, slightly less good Monday. Saturday was Clique Christmas Dinner at Katy's (if you don't know, don't ask) which finally wound up at about 3.30-4 in the morning, then poured self into taxi back to Rob and Steph's with them and Joff, flaking out fairly soon after. Sunday I sat around with them all day because the world was frankly horrible outside, and watched Harry Potter 3 again.

Didn't do too well in court this morning: won but frankly that was because it would have required a certain amount of effort to lose. Kept calling a Circuit Judge "Sir" (instead of "Your Honour": Sir or Madam is only appropriate for a District Judge, a Master in the High Court or a JP) and then apologising, fortunately he was a genial chap and pretended he still found it amusing the fourth time. Quite unlike HHJ Nameless a while back, who I called Your Honour on the basis that's what he is normally, forgetting he was sitting as a Section 9 Judge (really, don't ask) and therefore in that hearing correctly "My Lord": it's never good when, after you've set out your stall on what should have been a brief non-contentious case-management hearing, the icy response from the bench, tongue quite clearly nowhere near cheek, is "first of all, I'm my Lord...."

Shared a table in Maison Bertaux at lunch with a v. cute woman who turned out to be a ZZ-List celebrity. Well, a presenter on some satellite Chanel 9 style outfit the actual name of which I forget. Now sitting around staring into space, listening to Goldfrapp, wondering if I exceeded even my customary dosage of coffee today, and writing tedious posts here.

... and a hearing anticipated to be a five minute in and out job turns into an hour and a half, with three counsel (all of whom were in agreement) being shouted at for the status of papers in a case they'd all received (in place of more senior people whose attendance was thought to be an unwarranted expense for such a hearing) the day before.

Oh well.

Two small snippets from this week's Private Eye that amused me:

In a world of "dogging", "piking" and other exotic modern practices, it can be tricky for hacks to keep up with the latest street-slang. Last week, however, consensus was reached on the Street of Shame on how to deal with the Kevin Spacey mugging story. The Independent, Times, Mirror and Daily Mail all described the actor not as a friend of Dorothy but "a friend of Peter Mandelson."

(I can't imagine what they might possibly be insinuating about Spacey, and the story...).

and a reference to the critics "quote" on the posters for the stage version of When Harry met Sally starring Alyson Hannigan and Luke Perry.

As quoted on the posters, the line is "Fans of Hannigan and Perry will be ecstatic", and I confess that, seeing them as I come up the escalators at Holborn every morning, the cynic in me had briefly wondered about the context of that. Well, apparently, the rest of the sentence, in a Time Out review, was "...their companions will just have to fake an interest", with added comments that "it is a long and tedious play" and "halfway through I began to wish that Harry and Sally had never met."

(While I haven't seen the play, I can't really see that the film is a natural candidate for a transfer to stage.)

Oh, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden unfavourably compares the analysis of Andrew Sullivan on Iraq to that of the Fafblog.. Read it and weep.

I feel like shite and I have a nominal trial tomorrow in Cambridge (nominal in that we've resolved everything except costs). Bah humbug.

I discovered via a chance-heard thing on Radio 4 that Bill Bailey has a weblog, here . The comments alone make it worth reading. Doesn't seem to be an RSS feed sadly, but Black Books 3 will be on Channel 4 next month, apparently.

I went over to Soho for lunch, for various reasons. As I was coming out, thinking about anything and everything save what I was doing and where I was going (about Part 48 of the Civil Procedure Rules, mainly; a recipe for brain damage if ever there was one) I bumped into a shortish man who was also not looking where he was going (the Coach and Horses as it turned out). He looked vaguely familiar so I smiled at him as I began to mutter apologies.. it wasn't until he cut in with "my fault" that I realised it was Ian Hislop, presumably on his way to the notorious Private Eye lunch. Hurrah. I make a habit of this actually: it is but a few months since I came round the corner by The Ivy and cannoned straight into El Paxman. Who is much taller than one would imagine. (Entirely my fault that time.)

You should try it, it's much more entertaining than ordinary slebspotting.

I've been so pressed with urgent work today I have only had three cigarettes and one cup of coffee since I got here. Those of you who know me well will surely appreciate just how bad a mood I'm in as a result. I didn't help that I was researching a highly silly, not to mention technical point, a real lawyers', last refuge of the scoundrel point about being out of time by a day or two (the scoundrels would be our opponents, rather than us).

Went to the Cork and Bottle last night (one of London's secret rather good Real Wine Bars -not to be confused with wine bars, Real Wine Bars like the C&B or Gordon's sell decent wine, end of story-) last night and drank with K. and A., Steph, H, and Ian. K having just finished her transfer paper she was actually more in a mood to drink heavily than the rest of us for once, and twisted all our arms. I blame it entirely on her that I woke up this morning with a mild hangover. So I wasn't in a good mood when I started the day. Now my mood is best described as steamingly bad, and I'm going out to dinner with a very old friend in about an hour. Obviously I should chain cigarettes and coffee till then. Weekend, not sure, might be going to see another old friend (both of them come from my first, UCL, university career, more than 10 years ago now, God I get depressed when I think that). Oh, and I have to have a case summary in one of the big cases I'm on done by Wednesday, so I'm going to have to do a fair amount of work too. Bah.

My new, Prudent, Gordon-inspired, tight fiscal policy comes into force on Tuesday... Except for going to see To Kill the King, or whatever it's called, Tim Roth as Cromwell and Rupert Everett as Charles I sounds inspired to me, and the new Helena Bonham Carter thing.. who cares what it's about.

Incidentally, why is it that women, in my experience, can never make the distinction between lust for a celebrity (which is fine, obviously) and lust for someone real (which isn't, when you're in a monogamous relationship?...In any case,you'd think since I'm single I'd now be free to lust after who I please, but apparently not, ho hum.) Answers on a postcard to...

I couldn't find my keys this morning, and wondered desparately, full of confusion, around my flat, screaming out loud, "where are they, I put them somewhere safe, I know it." Much like my dreams.