wine on expenses
Today after work I went home to change and grab some food, and then headed out to Jesus Green to play a game of rounders with my colleagues (vs. a worthy team of local chartered surveyors), in the twenty-five degree sunlight on the grass, and when I was up to bat I got one rounder and when I was fielding I caught one batsman out (and it turns out playing rounders when you're not at school in PE kit not only an enjoyable experience but positively fun). And afterwards we drifted across Midsummer Common to the Fort St George and drank wine on expenses by the river Cam. The pub has no road access, which is deliciously peaceful, and means you wander across the common in the sunshine to get home.
And, sometimes I miss the US. Swedish Fish! Half and half! I have to walk all the way to the postbox to return my Netflix discs, oh my god my life. And then sometimes I really, really don't. Such a blissful evening. What a wonderful place to live.
In other news, the Supreme Court has not done a stupid thing today; I've read the abbreviated judgement and, as usual, am less than impressed by the reasoning. Which isn't quite accurate - the reasoning is fine, but it seems as though my fundamental ambivalence regarding a constitutional court persists, which means its tortured readings and re-readings, its invocations of the Framers and what they wanted, etc, just don't impress me. I find it hard to internally understand codified constitutions and sovereignty outside the legislature. (On another note, my supervisor and I have been quiet recently and I've spent the last couple of days drinking coffee and reading Fifoot's Law of Contract. After reading a gentle few chapters on mediaeval assumpsit, civil-law considerations and the economic effects on the law of contracts as a result of globalisation before I even got to phenomenal of agreement, offers, acceptance, invitation to treat, all the basic stuff, I decided again that the British way of teaching law is so much more gentle and thoughtful than the American one. It's less ritualised, less pivoted on oral confrontation, and more in the style of the trainee, the apprentice, clerk, whatever, being articled into a noble tradition with care. And I have all the issues with English law and liberal legal systems in general that any person who's familiar with radical political thought would have - it's inherently racist and very inherently sexist, it constitutes itself as rational and neutral when it's as fallible as the rest of us, blah blah you've heard it. It's just I also believe you can't critique the law before you know the law. And here in England and Wales it's a kinder, sweeter way of knowing what you are when you're a lawyer.)
All of which is obiter anyway, because who cares how they got there when they got there. I suspect it will be a long, long time before the US federal government is responsible for healthcare reform that brings the American healthcare system out of a system of total barbarism, but this is a first step.
In other other news I have been feeling very sad recently, but the evening in the sunlight has revived me somewhat; I have only a couple of months left in my current job; in a week I am going to Germany; I have just finished watching Quatermass and the Pit, which I enjoyed much too much for something made in 1958 (not only is it creepy as all-get-out, it also seems to employ a far more liberal hand in its politics than many things fifty years younger); and we crossed the solstice, so eighteen hours of daylight is now getting shorter each day rather than longer, but that's all right.
And we go on. I am much, much too drunk for someone who has to go to work tomorrow before it's the weekend. Tonight the Caped Crusader told me, over his Peroni over our very wobbly table, "When you caught that guy out, I turned to [another trainee] and said, 'I told you she was Indian!' And now I feel bad. Was that bad?"
I told him, fondly and drunkenly, that it was terribly bad of him, but somehow I can never think badly of him when everything he says to me is laced with the most uncomplicatedly joyful affection. I went home feeling like the sunshine was inside me.
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comment(s). Comment there or here.
And, sometimes I miss the US. Swedish Fish! Half and half! I have to walk all the way to the postbox to return my Netflix discs, oh my god my life. And then sometimes I really, really don't. Such a blissful evening. What a wonderful place to live.
In other news, the Supreme Court has not done a stupid thing today; I've read the abbreviated judgement and, as usual, am less than impressed by the reasoning. Which isn't quite accurate - the reasoning is fine, but it seems as though my fundamental ambivalence regarding a constitutional court persists, which means its tortured readings and re-readings, its invocations of the Framers and what they wanted, etc, just don't impress me. I find it hard to internally understand codified constitutions and sovereignty outside the legislature. (On another note, my supervisor and I have been quiet recently and I've spent the last couple of days drinking coffee and reading Fifoot's Law of Contract. After reading a gentle few chapters on mediaeval assumpsit, civil-law considerations and the economic effects on the law of contracts as a result of globalisation before I even got to phenomenal of agreement, offers, acceptance, invitation to treat, all the basic stuff, I decided again that the British way of teaching law is so much more gentle and thoughtful than the American one. It's less ritualised, less pivoted on oral confrontation, and more in the style of the trainee, the apprentice, clerk, whatever, being articled into a noble tradition with care. And I have all the issues with English law and liberal legal systems in general that any person who's familiar with radical political thought would have - it's inherently racist and very inherently sexist, it constitutes itself as rational and neutral when it's as fallible as the rest of us, blah blah you've heard it. It's just I also believe you can't critique the law before you know the law. And here in England and Wales it's a kinder, sweeter way of knowing what you are when you're a lawyer.)
All of which is obiter anyway, because who cares how they got there when they got there. I suspect it will be a long, long time before the US federal government is responsible for healthcare reform that brings the American healthcare system out of a system of total barbarism, but this is a first step.
In other other news I have been feeling very sad recently, but the evening in the sunlight has revived me somewhat; I have only a couple of months left in my current job; in a week I am going to Germany; I have just finished watching Quatermass and the Pit, which I enjoyed much too much for something made in 1958 (not only is it creepy as all-get-out, it also seems to employ a far more liberal hand in its politics than many things fifty years younger); and we crossed the solstice, so eighteen hours of daylight is now getting shorter each day rather than longer, but that's all right.
And we go on. I am much, much too drunk for someone who has to go to work tomorrow before it's the weekend. Tonight the Caped Crusader told me, over his Peroni over our very wobbly table, "When you caught that guy out, I turned to [another trainee] and said, 'I told you she was Indian!' And now I feel bad. Was that bad?"
I told him, fondly and drunkenly, that it was terribly bad of him, but somehow I can never think badly of him when everything he says to me is laced with the most uncomplicatedly joyful affection. I went home feeling like the sunshine was inside me.
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.