wine on expenses

[loneraven]

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

Comments

[highfantastical]

1. The title of this post is excellent.
2. You managed to make Cambridge sound nice! Impressive given my current 'hate them all; hate it all' stance.
3. I'm so sorry you've been feeling sad. You deserve quite the opposite.
4. <3

[loneraven]

You are the sweetest. I have not told you that recently. And as the days have got longer and longer and I get further from the job that made me so unhappy, Cambridge is growing on me. It's not as nice as Oxford, but nowhere is and I never stop being amazed that my boring and unremarkable workplace is on the edge of Midsummer Common and the River Cam, and all the quiet beauty of it all is within arm's reach.

[littlered2]

Hurrah for rounders and nice evenings in the sunshine! I'm glad it revived you (although how did you get such nice weather; it was grey and cold here this evening, although hot in the morning).

The ruling is excellent news, although I also am not overly fond of the US system of constitutional law. (I just find myself saying, "but this should OBVIOUSLY be a right, who cares if it wasn't written down by a load of white men ~250 years ago?")

[loneraven]

This, I have no idea. It was 28 degrees and sunny here while Newcastle was flooding! It's nice again today, though less ridic warm.

Codified con law, it's a mindfuck. My endearing pair of con law professors in the US used to treat me very kindly, and say things like, "That's a very non-American view" (and once, apologetically to a visiting speaker, "Iona is our resident Brit") rather than "are you mad, are you".

[littlered2]

The other half of this county was underwater quite recently, although East Sussex generally seems to escape such things (hurrah!). It's still a bit chilly and drizzly, though.

My endearing pair of con law professors in the US used to treat me very kindly, and say things like, "That's a very non-American view" (and once, apologetically to a visiting speaker, "Iona is our resident Brit") rather than "are you mad, are you".

So tactful of them!

[rhuia]

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.

Oh that's lovely. I've always been charmed by the language of your legal institutions (anything that can marry the word 'Temple' and 'Inn', however obliquely, is okay by my book). It's nice to hear those institutions are run with appropriate emotional gravitas -- although it's equally nice that Rumpole's the poster boy for the two Temples, which balances out the world splendidly, I think.

We've crossed the solstice the other way! Split the difference.

[loneraven]

Me too. I'm a land lawyer by inclination, so I get more of it than most people. One case I had reason to look at the other day was from the fourteenth century, and oh, I love that, that continuity of experience so that I can be reading something written seven hundred years ago and apply it to something that's happening right now to real living people.

Rumpole is great! He claims to have been admitted at Outer Temple, which makes me think of an Inn of Court floating around in space...

[gamesiplay]

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.

MY GOD, ME TOO. (Or, more grammatically, ME EITHER.) (They do not impress me either.) (You know what I mean.)

I love you and the last line of this post. The US misses you too (although I do not understand what you miss about half and half. :P) I'm so sorry you've been sad lately. If I could, I would send you Hayley to cuddle. <3

[loneraven]

Leigh, half and half is the best. It's like cream, but not. And the truly creepy thing about American dairy products is that over there they can put weird shit in them that the EU bans, so they DON'T GO OFF. I used to pick milk or cream out of the fridge to chuck and then be like... whoa, this is still fresh, this is creepy.

ANYWAY. Hi. I miss you lots! Give Hayley a kiss from me.

[fyrdrakken]

Sounds like a splendid day -- thank you for sharing it with us! (I briefly contemplated speculating on the differences both in the practice of law and more generally cultural that lead to the differences in UK and US legal training -- but it's not like I know enough about either to be likely to have any sort of an intelligent opinion.)

[loneraven]

I believe people have written books on the subject! It's fascinating, especially because there's such a specific point of divergence where English common law ceased to be binding on American decisions. American law is fascinating, though - there is even one civil-law jurisdiction over there, which I just can't get over.

[fyrdrakken]

See, elsewhere on my friends list is someone whose legal training took place in Scotland, and she mentioned in passing at one point that Scottish law differs from English law (as I pause to boggle) because so much of Scottish law is based on French (and IIRC therefore on Roman before that), whereas English law is coming from a standpoint of pre-existing local common law, or something like that. And Americans all grow up being taught there is federal law, and there is state law, and we learn from the news that state law is wildly varying -- but it's pretty easy to just write off the regional distinctions as being just that, without connecting the dots and looking into why they differ and which influences only affected which areas.