Lawing it up

So I’ve been lawing it up now for about three weeks and so far things are going pretty well apart from my over-exerting myself in trying to navigate the complex matter of ingratiating oneself to ones peers (of which I have so far 122 and counting), and under-exerting myself on the matter of remembering law. Read I can do. Remembering. That’s the problem – so far I’m at about 50%. I can remember that Miller was the guy who set a house on fire with a cigarette when he was asleep and on waking thought he’d solve this oopsy by just going back to sleep in the next room. And then there was poor Pittwood. Guilty of manslaughter as his job was to lower the rail at the level crossing. But so much was on his mind that day that he just didn’t. As to why these little stories are important - the true legal gravity of the cases, and the years in which they happened and where they are reported, all that other important stuff… well I dunno.

That said, some cases are so bizarre that you’re really not going to have any trouble. Like this one in which a man named Quick [1973] , a psychiatric nurse, and a diabetic, under the encouragement of a helpful fellow employee named Paddison, a bottle of whiskey and some rum; attacked a patient in the hospital in which he was working. It seems that a troph of judges in such cases (and in general) is to either naively or obsequiously lay out the matter in a manner that no truly sane person would. Consider the following report:

The defendants were both employed at Farleigh Mental Hospital, Flax Bourton, Somerset. Quick was a charge nurse, Paddison a state enrolled nurse. At the trial it was not disputed that at about 4 p.m. on December 27, 1971, one Green, a paraplegic spastic patient unable to walk, was sitting in Rosemount Ward at the hospital, watching television. Quick was on duty; Paddison had gone off duty at 2 p.m. but was still present in the ward. Half an hour later, Green had sustained two black eyes, a fractured nose, a split lip which required three stitches, and bruising of his arm and shoulders. There was undisputed medical evidence that these injuries could not have been self-inflicted.

This was after the guys admitted their guilt, but naturally before subsequent the legal wrangling began in which Quick suggested that he was an automaton thanks to insulin and whiskey. Maybe that’s what happened to the borg. Maybe Jean luc Picard could’ve solved the whole first contact thing a lot quicker by bringing along a few sugar cubes? That said, I haven’t actually seen the film, so for all I know that’s exactly what happened.

As for my ability to talk to the pretty girls in my class, that has much improved. I should however be aware of the dating-statute-of-limitations that is present in such scenarios, and strike while the date of accrual of causation is still within the informal limits. My mother says I’ve become more noticeably litigious-minded in these past few weeks. Personally I don’t see it.

As I write this blog, I am awaiting the departure of my flight to Cork where I will meet the heads of the research that I am doing in the hospital.

Now, as I continue this blog, I am back from Cork four days. It was like flying inside a bumble bee.

Kerry is in Dublin now, minus her baggage and now as I write this blog, I await a call from the airport to tell me that they have it, or that it was jetisoned (sp?) over the Atlantic Ocean.

Last night I had a dream that I was a horse (corporeally) riding up a river toward either a sunrise or a sunset and had some kind of female celestial being on my back speaking into my ear. This is either a sign that my soul is in pretty good shape, or that I don't have long left on the planet. Fingers crossed for the former. Yes?

Haven't seen much of the monkey lately, but I get the impression he's doing pretty ok.

Take care folks,

Buckley.

Photos by Diarmuid, 4th Sept (early hours), Templebar, Dublin City I

Rob and Me. Happiest night this year (in which I didn't score). 

Photos by Diarmuid, 4th Sept (early hours), Templebar, Dublin City II

This picture captures the previously unappreciated (by me) beauty of the moment before I offered a man a lollipop because he seemed dispondant... and I had been drinking... and I was celebrating my birthday.  

Your prodigal blogger returns.

Well dear readers (if have any left), I have been leaving you to fend for yourselves of late, and thank you Jo and Kerry for nudging me encouragingly to a blogging rebirth.

The outcome of my little conversation with Quasi-Mojo was ultimately his making alternate arrangements and leaving me (much as I did you dear readers) to my own devices. The device in question was an electric blanket, which I have been utilizing to compensate for the absence of Q-M’s body-heat these past 10 days or whatever it has been. So it turns out that life does not mirror Hollywood, and sometimes, what looks like a plot, really doesn’t develop and becomes something like a vignette that should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Whudathunkit?

So lately, apart from working in the Emergency Department (and hopefully I'll have something interesting to say about hat at a later date), I have been known to attend the Honorable Society of Kings Inns. So now, I am a mild-mannered researcher by day for two days a week, and ill-mannered student by day, for the rest of the week but at night… I am Law-Man… A superhero who has the ability to dress pretentiously, take notes on his laptop (while everyone else scribbles frantically and resents the insidious hum of said laptop), talk to his middle-aged classmates, and avoid the attractive young female class mates as if he has the super-powers of invisibility and girl-repellant, and be able to tell you what Article 15.5 of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland is… as if by magic…

So I’m pretty busy.

I’m pretty happy with how the course is going so far to be honest. It is a godsend to have a buddy in the class – and I couldn’t ask for a better one than Nathan (as the 1981 Sale of Goods Act does not extend to asking God to replace your friends – no really he’s been smashin). My class mates, on the whole, seem like a pretty good bunch though you’re always bound to get a few weirdos in a class on 122. And despite my seeming inoculation against speaking to the young ladies, there is one incapacitatingly attractive girl in the class who I have every intention of discreetly making the acquaintance of (hopefully she likes men who stutter and sweat and blush and maintain eye-contact for record-breaking lengths of time – and she’s bound to – what woman doesn’t? Right?).

“So Buckley or whatever you’re calling yourself now,” I hear you say, “Why is it that all you seem to talk about these days is your abysmal singleness and pursuit your of love - emotional & physical?”

Well, rhetorical inquisitor, that’s because I’m abysmally single and in pursuit of love.

“Touche.”