Well criminal went well. Theft came up, which was okay. As were murder, manslaughter, provocation and diminished responsibility.
So hurrah!
I was utterly exhausted. So treated self to a bit of chatting, a ballet class, some wine and a Chinese with an old friend.
Tomorrow sees me revising duty of care for negligent misstatements resulting in pure econimic loss.
I actually have nothing else to say. 5 days before this mayhem ends! But then after that I am attending 5 piss ups in 5 days...
Billygean:
Help! My notes are rubbish.Future Housemate S:
What's up?Billygean:
I know you can only plead diminished responsibility under s2 if the abnormality of mind is linked to your crime e.g. a schizophrenic can use it for murder but a depressive probably can't... is this right?FHS:
Yes I think so.Billygean:
In the corner of my notes I have something about low mental development and low IQs.FHS:
I vaguely remember this.Billygean:
My exact notes say "someone with IQ of 50 can't rely on it". Is this true and do we have a case?FHS:
I have no idea. They can't ask that can they?Billygean:
If they're evil. Which they are. FHS:
Who has an IQ of 50 anyway?Billygean:
Us?Labels: law
I am going out for a curry in 2.5 weeks' time.
This is not ordinarily a big deal, other than that I won't be randomly memorising items on the menu and worrying about whether public authorities can be sued in nervous shock cases.
Smouldering tutor will be there.
He is recently divorced and on the look out for a diligent student to begin an illicit affair with.
(Subtext: He wore his wedding ring in the December land law lectures and not in the May land law revision lectures. He has shaved his head which symbolises that he is Moving On. He also once like, made eye contact with me).
What to wear?
Labels: asking the internet, law
God I LOVE living alone.
I am alone until Tuesday because my Dad's gone to see his relatives in
Newcastle. This morning, I peed with the door open.
This afternoon, I did revision naked!
Is this okay to tell the
Internets?
Anyway, I had a shower and the heating was on, and I was so comfortable that I stayed that way. I could totally get used to this. Of course, being allowed to go out and not stay in revising cases about people that kill other people by putting WIRES in their mouth, would be nice, but still. The only downsides are that I can't actually remember the last time I spoke. I think it might have been Friday morning.
So then I made nachos (when dressed), and had delightful feast of these and
re-fried beans and sour creme which I totally spilt all down me and I hadn't done my hair anyway so who gives a fuck?
Yes the hair was a TOTAL MISTAKE. Short hair, there is no controlling it when it wants to stick up. You just have to deal with it.
So I think I'll become a crazy lady with scary hair. It is easier than fighting it really.
NB. To continue earlier conversation about in-house
Hollyoaks lawyers which I know you were
just dying to do, I present you with an extract of a conversation with Future Housemate S so you can REALLY appreciate how the lawyer's mind works:
Future Housemate S:
How was lunch?Billygean:
Good and bad. Good, had humous. Bad, got distracted by Hollyoaks omnibus.FHS:
Ooh anything interesting?Billygean:
Yes, lawyer got the law wrong!FHS:
Oh?Billygean:
Yes, A handed B a pork scratching as part of her job.FHS:
YepBillygean:
B then happened to choke on it. When asked if A would be liable for B's death, lawyer said yes!FHS:
Oh God.Billygean:
They may not have used the word liable.[pause]
But I can't think of a normal one.FHS:
No me neither. "Done for?"Billygean:
About right.FHS:
How could he be liable anyway?Billygean:
No idea.FHS:
Did they not even talk about remoteness?Labels: law
I appear to be a nominee for
Big Blogger 2007. Incidentally it took me ages to work out what nominee meant. I only understand it in the sense of trusts and custodians. Because I am boring.
Today I am mostly annoyed. I am TIRED of revision and I still have almost two weeks left of it. I cannot physically memorise any more meaningless case names.
Also, there was a lawyer on Hollyoaks (in my stringent half an hour lunch break), who, when asked if A would be liable for giving B a product which B choked on, nodded!
I may have merely glanced at my criminal revision notes for Wednesday's exam but even I know this.
So, the only solution is to be Hollyoaks' in-house lawyer.
It still means passing though, damn.
Labels: grumbles, law
Person Remaining Anonymous:
And how're you, how's work...?Billygean:
Good thanks. Ooh, three cats are having a meeting in our garden! Nose to nose, stare-out.PRA
: Merger?Billygean:
*Twangs braces* buy gold!PRA:
Buy low sell high *puff of cigar*Billygean:
*Snorts coke*PRA:
Outrageous business meeting *goes to strip club*Billygean:
*Spends £100 on bottle of champagne*PRA:
*Punches dog slave in face cos he can*Billygean:
Anyway. How're you?Labels: law
"What are we having done?" the hairdresser says, flicking her
blonde hair over her shoulder.
"Chop it all off," I grumble.
She looks at me for a moment. "Sounds like a bad hair day or the break up hair cut," she says.
I laugh and pull the photo out of my back. I show it to her and instruct her how to do it, because I am anal and secretly think I am a better hairdresser than her. She begins snipping away and I watch the long pieces falling to the floor.
"You could say break up hair cut," I say slowly.
"
Mmmm," she says.
And then it all tumbles out of my mouth, the whole sorry story, and how I've moved home, and how that feels like such a step back, and how I don't really know where I'm going, or what will happen, but I'm actually quite happy with that.
She listens sympathetically,
mmming in all the right places.
It's odd, that
Catharsis you feel when you divulge to a stranger. Suddenly the entire sorry story has a shape, and meaning to someone outside my very close circle of associates. It is out of my cool bedroom, away from the window I lean out of, the beautiful music I surround myself with, away from the walks I take and the tears I've shed.
The contrasts are stark now, the cracks in the relationship, the mistakes we made. It is almost as if the words hang in the air, and there they are, the warning signs, the hasty acts, the cruel revenge, dashed blood-red for everyone except us to see.
If only those bits could be cut away, revealing the insides that nobody sees. The years of happiness, the early morning laughter, the ability to do any say absolutely anything around each other, the fields and lit up trees and glistening canals.
The hair dresser snips the last bit of my hair away. It falls to the floor in a clump.
I look up, and it suddenly all feels different.
Well, they were okay. They felt great until I realised I missed out a major thing in each of them which I am actually too embarrassed to tell everybody. Except the entire internet.
I am actually exhausted, and writing this from my third home in Birmingham where I am camped out until tomorrow where I return home for yet more memorising
I am so utterly exhausted.
182 more cases learnt today.
The other 200 tomorrow.
(Then commute).
Then two exams.
Then party.
Then sleep.
Then revise again.
Labels: law
My facebook status is currently set to "Billygean is an invitation to treat, or an offer, she thinks she'll sit on the fence and move onto the next question."
Cue a message from a random person I have never met (but is a lawyer) in my inbox this morning:
You're an invitation to treat! And I suspect the consideration due is quite a lot. More than in Chappel v Nestle anyway! Have a good weekend Hot Stuff.
I don't think I'll dignify this with a response.
Labels: law
It is ten to seven and I am at the bus stop. I am musing on the Contract Exam From Hell and considering that I shouldn't have spent last night cramming for questions that didn't come up, but working on how to answer questions that do come up. BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT I CAN'T. My advice to my client was: "This is definitely a
binding offer invitation to treat and there is therefore
not a contract."
I also added a handy note in the margin saying, "what if it's a unilateral offer?" which I forgot to cross out entirely, just so they know I didn't have a clue what I was on about.
A man with approximately four teeth joins me. He sits unusually close to me. I smile at him vacantly and do not remove my headphones.
He pats my knee.
I remove my headphones. Stuck to my guns, there.
"Hi," he says. "I'm Charlotte."
I do not quite know what to say. "I'm
Billygean," I offer (or invite to treat. HA - A LAW JOKE).
"I'm actually Ned," he says, laughing.
He is clearly mad.
He announces he is on bail. I have Tory-thoughts that he just has the
vibe of a criminal client about him: harmless, a bit too friendly, a bit thick.
I look at him for a moment, dying to know what his crime was, also all too aware that if he finds out what I
do he may try and make me guess sentencing times which is never fun, especially when you last looked at criminal law in March (oh that exam will creep up on me).
"Assault," he says. "I don't like Eastern Europeans."
I smile and put my headphones back in.
It is now twenty to eight. One Rufus Wainwright album later. There is still no bus. Criminal Client is beside himself, tapping on his knees, pacing, smoking.
By ten to eight there is a whole crowd of us. A man who works at Tiresome Factory where I used to work assembling capacitors. A pregnant 14 year old. A man who claims he's had 14 shots of vodka this afternoon.
I'm sorry but you do have to love Tamworth.
Criminal Client has sudden fit of rage at the third bus to pass us by saying "not in service". He throws his empty can of cider at it, which, whilst very scary and aggressive, isn't much help.
Conduit Assembler turns to me suddenly. "You," he says, lighting a cigarette. "You look posh, what do you do?"
I wish I could lie. Really, I do. "Law..." I say. Which, you may notice sounds nothing like lawyer but they made this leap. I did not correct them.
If they asked whether partial non-
disclosure was an actionable misrepresentation in my exam I SO COULD HAVE TOLD THEM. BUT THEY DID NOT.
Alas, I digress.
Criminal Client squares up to me. "A lawyer," he says, with the mirth of a true criminal client. "You should go and negotiate with that bus driver then."
He is not aggressive, I must point out. And I would ordinarily have laughed. Except then the cheering starting. And the mutterings about bloody lawyers, and how moving house takes so long, and how they all wear their suits and take the tax payer's money, and ponce about in wigs, and get criminals off on technicalities, and always bloody sue when people trip over. Etc.
"Er, okay," squeak, and sidle up to the out of service bus.
"Hello," I say, Criminal Client standing behind me. "We need a bus."
I am bright red. Bus Driver looks from me to Criminal Client and back again. "Please," I say, and I shamelessly push my boobs together a bit with my elbows.
I think he pities me and my bad flirting. "Sure," he says. "Get on and I'll take you to where the number 7 should go."
Criminal Client slaps me heartily on the back, and we all board the bus FOR FREE.
Criminal Client opens another can of cider on the bus, spraying it all over me in celebration. "You lawyers aren't that bad," he says, like they always do when you get them off on a technicality.
Labels: Home, law
I sink forwards onto the sofa. "I don't know," I wail. "I don't know any of it."
That's right, it's contract law tomorrow.
"It's okay," my Dad says. "
Gosling v Atherton allowed a claim for a loss of bargain even though he was claiming under s2(1) damages."
I stare, willing it to sink in.
"And," he says "In
Jarvis v Swan Tours Ltd it was said
obiter," he raises his eyebrows at the poncy Latin, "that you may as well sue in misrepresentation because the damages are as generous."
"Right," I say, standing up and pacing.
"Jarvis, how can I remember this?"
"Easy," Dad says. "Goslings and Swans."
I stare at him.
"Both birds," he says.
"Oh," I say, pausing. "What the hell are Goslings?"
Labels: grumbles, Home, law
I have dropped my phone in the bath.
For the third time.
Since I am telephoneless until Friday when I go and rummidge in my old Birmingham house for an old handset, I only just got up. IT IS ELEVEN FORTY ONE A.M.
This means I have approximately 24 hours to cram approximately 140 cases which yesterday, seemed a perfectly sensible idea to leave to today.
At least this gives me The Fear again, for I had lost it.
Only a million more exams.
Fabulously Gay Tutor's exam was yesterday.
It was
really nice. I memorised three concepts, which was admittedly a risk, and they all came up.
I think it's because I bought the same pens I used in my finals, which went well. This is obviously what it is.
I now have a "break" in which to memorise contract. Contract is fine because I have a distinction on some coursework. And also because I understand contract. Equity and Trusts AND land next Monday won't however be so good. So I should in theory be cramming those too.
But I am so TIRED. And coffee is doing nothing. And I am staring at the very small pile of Things I don't Ever Have To Do Ever Again* and very large pile of Things Still To Learn.
Must cram breach of fiduciary duties this evening but I do not think there is any more room in my head.
Anyway, who plans for Monday on Wednesday?
*subject to resists. Oh, and, when I'm actually a lawyer. In 14 months, er...!Labels: grumbles, law
Also, should you be missing your Billygean blonde moments, the rest of the Internets is recording them in my mad revision absense (that is, writing blogs only about revision. OBVIOUSLY I will never leave blogging entirely like proper dedicated people)
See here (at the bottom) And here
Dear EU tutor,
Can I just ask you why you decided to spend 8 weeks of semester one talking about Directives, scaremongering about the exam, setting essays on Directives and pacing frantically at the front of the Avon room shouting "Am I a directive pretending to be a regulation, or am I a
true regulation?"
So of course everybody revised Directives, and it was their Question That They Were Going To Do (in my case so I didn't have to talk about qualified majority voting in the European Council. Or the Council of Ministers. I forget).
And then you didn't put it on the paper, did you, you smug git.
What a start...
Labels: grumbles, law
Dear Hormonal Lady Raging Inside Me,
I am so sorry. I only just realised.
You see. The thing is - I can explain.
When Mike and I broke up I decided I really didn't want a period to add to my angst.
And then, well, I moved home and forgot my pills.
And suddenly it's 7 weeks later and I have just been eating a pill everyday. No wonder I cried at Who Wants to Be a Millionaire today! No wonder I actually SHOUTED at a spider sitting innocently on the windowsill. This also explains why it felt like my Dad's fault that I forgot the
Grad v Finanzampt Transtein case in EC law AGAIN.
I'm not really sure what I can do though, Hormonal Lady. The maths is just too complicated. I have 17 pills left, not including the one I found, rather disturbingly, in my bin. I think I will have to eat them all.
But! then I will run out. And this means
seeing Doctor B in 17 days. By which time my exams will still not be over and, no matter how much cheese I consume, I cannot seem to get back to 7 stone (I know my weight is currently shocking which Hormonal Lady has also cried about today), which will not bode well.
My Dad informs me that buying
Microgynon off the
Internets isn't such a good idea for a budding lawyer (and JUDGE, although I suspect you have to get more than 41% in equity and actually know what the House of Lords do).
So I think I'll borrow some off my sister. But this would be
unethical I suspect, also she may be understandably paranoid I will sue her in negligence. Doctor-sister, this presumes I know what negligence is at the moment.
SO COMPLICATED. The worst part?
I am not even having sex.Labels: grumbles
I have finally convinced everyone around me to get a blog. Including, famous Old Tutor, who if you recall hosted a seminar about blogging wherein I had to speak about tampons, or something. And, who read my essay containing the word penis and can still look me in the eye.
Check it outLabels: blogging
It scares me that the number of stick labels corresponds to how many statutory provisions I need to know.
For one module.
As you well know, I am not remotely organised or fussy about sticky labels. I do not highlight my lecture notes in green for example.
Therefore, the number of sticky tabs also corresponds to:
* How many coffees I have had
* The amount of times I have sworn today
* The amount of FEAR THERE IS INSIDE ME
Labels: law
It is absolutely shitting it down. My hair is sticking to my neck and cold drops are running steadily down my back.
I walk under the trees in the lane near my house. It smells pungently of blossom which has now fallen off the trees and lies sprinkled across the grass and the puddles.
The lush bag I am holding is sodden and suddenly breaks.
The beautiful pink bath melt falls from the bag. I watch, open mouthed, as it splashes into a puddle.
Within seconds the entire puddle is bright pink.
A lone snail sits at the side of the puddle, basking in its creamy candy bath.
You have to smile sometimes don't you?
Labels: grumbles
So a distinction usually stands me in good stead for the rest of the day, mood wise. You may want to read in here that this implies I am anal and seek to validate my personality with essay marks. But we won't go here.
The day got steadily worse with the Equity Paper From Hell. Warning: do not attempt to sit past exams papers for your worst module. Ignorance is by far a better option.
Do not forget to get off the train at Tamworth.
Do not use your last Lush bathbomb only to discover it's full of honey, which, while delighting me!, also saddened me because it meant body and hair were covered in oil instead of being clean.
A bad move in response to this would be to drain the bathwater and have a shower.
This is because there was a spider hiding on the shower head.
I used the c-word.
Another bad move would be to bravely continue showering, slip and fall in the oil.
One last thing: never email your tutors about consideration and land registration. You will get the scariest replies EVER:
-------------------------
Dear BillygeanIf one of the “triggers to registration” takes place, under s4 LRA 2002 (basically, if the land is sold, handed over as a gift, granted by court order or a lease of more than 7 years is created out of it) OR if the land is voluntarily registered then first registration rules apply. If the land is unregistered, there is no voluntary registration and none of the triggers to first registration takes place during the problem question, then the rules governing unregistered land will apply (the most common example here is where a lease of less than seven years is created out of unregistered land).Best wishesSmouldering Tutor-------------------------
Dear Billygean
It is true that mutual promises provide consideration for each other. This is the basis of the notion of the executory contract (i.e. a contract which has been made but not yet performed). It is much harder to explain why this is the case, although it is well established that it is. The problem with saying that executory promises are good consideration is that the argument appears to be circular. They are only good consideration if they make the other side’s promise binding – but that is what we are trying to prove. It is the case that the executory promises are only good consideration if the act or forebearance promised would itself be a good consideration when performed, so I suppose that you could say that the promise has to be “something of value”, but this is also a victim of the circularity argument which I mentioned above.
Yours confusedly
Contract Lecturer
-------------------------
Thanks for this.
Smouldering Tutor, I don't care how hot you are, land registration will never make sense.
Labels: law
So, the
Contract Law assessed essay got me a distinction. Hurrah. All this non-w0rking has been doing me good.
Okay, so that was January but whatever.
It is 7pm. I am in my dressing gown. I have been all day.
I pad downstairs. Doctor-sister is VOLUNTARILY SITTING EXTRA EXAMS and is being tested by Mad-Father.
"Hen table?" he says, squinting at her handwriting.
She huffs and leans over the paper. "Splenomegaly," she says, like it's obvious.
I wander out of the living room and through to the kitchen. I am ruminating. And gazing. Just did an EU past paper and it went reasonably terribly.
I open the back door absent-mindedly and look out into the rain. Gingerly I dip my bare toe onto the cold step, thinking about the
Dzodi principle and how to apply it.
Doctor-sister comes up behind me, wearing her Concerned Face.
"Now now," she says softly. "Come inside Billygean. You're in your dressing gown and it's raining. You're better off inside."
Her voice is oddly soothing.
"I'm not MAD," I say.
I look down and I am wearing one sock.
Labels: grumbles, law
The Fear struck a little later than usual this year.
But it's here, oh yes.
The sudden realisation that in 9 days I will be writing about cases I can't yet pronounce.
In 10 days, about Parliamentary Sovereignty, which I don't yet know what it is.
I wonder what will happen when they all realise that I do not understand the Treaty system in the EU. Or when they realise I don't actually have a clue what the word "reasonable" means and I just bandy it about for marks. Or that it's touch and go whether I remember the leading case on easements let alone the other 350.
Or that I don't understand legislation AT ALL. Or know what the House of Commons is. Or that I don't know why THE SUN RISES.
I will fail and the markers will compare my exams scripts. And then will be paraded around the clock tower and all the Law Lords will come and throw stones at me in a shameful lesson to all law students who fuck about over Easter.
And then Law Firm will ring me and shout at me and tell me that they knew I was lying when I said I was really interested in the role lawyers have to play in outsourcing and that they only gave me a training contract in an ironic kind of way, just to see if backwards people could become lawyers.
And at everyone's graduation that I'll be allowed to attend as a guest, I will get the award not for passing, but for sending the highest number of obsessive emails. And then they'll read out the hundreds of emails and laugh about how I didn't even mention the correct statute in the misrepresentation exam after all that mithering, and how I'm probably the hardest working stupid student they've ever had.
And I will get pitying looks as I leave the graduation ceremony and begin my life living in a box outside Woolworths, shouting about The Misrepresentation Act 1967 and how it ruined my life.
And then we will have to do this all again in August.
Labels: grumbles, law
I slam the door to the ballet studio, late as ever. I am in leg warmers,
woolly top,
woolly shorts.
It is sub-tropical in the glass studio. The sunlight is skimming across the sprung floor, giving the dancers' bodies an amber tint as they stretch on the bars.
"Hello stranger," V says, smiling at me.
"Hello!" I say, grabbing a place at the
barre and stripping off my layers.
"Long time no see?" she says, hoisting her leg on the
barre and leaning over it.
I throw my hands into the air as the music starts. "Exam hell. Relationshipness," I say. "We'll talk later," I say as I arrange my body into first position and attempt to copy the exercise.
"Sounds hellish," my teacher's voice says behind me. He looks me up and down as I
plié. "It's done your figure wonders though. Really slimmed you down."
You would only ever hear this in a ballet class.
Labels: ballet, grumbles
