Professionals

Visiting a different part of the city, it’s increasingly obvious that different areas are home to different tribes.  For instance, in the City itself, you get an awful lot of people and bicycles.  This is not, I suspect, because they can’t afford the bus fare.  Looking at the bikes and the freshness of the lycra that these people sport as they pass in a day-glo swoosh, this is a two-wheeled tribe that have decided that public transport is simply not for them, possibly because they do not wish to become contaminated with poor.

Then there are men who look normal, except on their feet they have trainers in clown-shoe colours with soles of a thickness that would not look out of place in the glam rock era.  That’s right.  Men.  Wearing trainers to work.  What next, lip balm and hair conditioner?

The City is home to Professionals, making their way to work with the same sort of purposeful intent you see insects exhibiting in nature documentaries. 

Traditionally the definition of a professional is somebody who gets paid for what they do but lately I’ve been thinking that there’s more to it than that.  A mini-cab driver is paid for their work, but so is Lewis Hamilton and I know which of the two better defines the term ‘professional driver’.  Of course, this does not mean that you would want Lewis Hamilton as your mini-cab driver, as his habit of stopping for new tyres three times every trip might prove inconvenient, as might his habit of grabbing his fare’s bottle of fizz, shaking it up and spraying it all over the place every time he dropped somebody off at a party.

Roughly, only 3% of people who get paid to do something are expert enough in it to be called ‘professional’ in the true sense of the word.  Normally, the deficiencies of the remaining 97% go unnoticed because they work in HR, or B&Q, or somewhere else with initials instead of a name.

Hence, I propose that the definition for professional be: somebody who earns enough to afford a pool and a hot partner, or can change a fucking till roll unaided.

Lawyers are a good example of multi-tiered professionalism.  For reasons far too dull to go into I’ve been wandering past the Old Bailey on a regular basis recently and, because the only thing I dislike more than huge corporations are bloody protestors trying to tell me where to drink my coffee, I’ve been popping into Starbucks for my java and really, really, enjoying it (secret recipe: full fat milk, one shot of Big Coffee and a pinch of guilt).

Obviously, there is the standard issue Man With A Beard writing something on his Apple Mac but in the Starbucks near the Old Bailey you also get trios of lawyers clustered round those little tables the size of mushrooms.  One has a laptop, one has a file, one has a mobile, all three have worried expressions and no wonder, in twenty minutes they are due in court and this is their prep.  There is evidence of muffin consumption.

Meanwhile, and example of the REAL professional was already standing outside the Court.  She has adopted the ‘pissed off raven’ look that all successful female barristers acquire when they reach the tipping point of assurance in their profession, with wig, gown and black tights it’s a look they lifted from Patricia Hodge in ‘Rumpole’ but have made their own with the simple addition of a fag.  Yes, while the boys and girls are in Starbucks drinking latte and green tea, the real deal is having their breakfast Benson & Hedges without even smirching the slash of red lipstick that proves they can be a successful lawyer and a woman too. 

This then is the lawyer you want if you’re in a tight spot.  The Starbucks Three are not the team you want defending you if you are facing a ten stretch being banged up in a cell with someone they call ‘The Fairy With The Enormous Cock’.  If you’re in trouble, you want your lawyers at the very least to be a) pounding fags and espresso or b) from off telly.

Royal Courts of Justice

I was recently at the Royal Courts of Justice. Not, thank God, seeking any kind of justice for myself, I have seen the teevee adaptation of ‘Bleak House’ and now know that a) Gillian Anderson is hot no matter what sort of dress you put her in and b) any man who relies upon the law for redress is setting themselves up for mental anguish and possible death by spontaneous human combustion.

Nor was I prosecuting, I’ve seen enough movies to know that the system is not the way to get any kind of justice in this world. No, if you have a gripe with somebody or something, say the flex on a kettle you bought is frayed, then it’s best to cut out the whole official route and go directly to the role of near-lunatic masked avenger who takes down the whole corrupt system of discount electrical superstores with nothing more than a wise-cracking sidekick and a flamethrower. Sounds unlikely? At least 27% of all purchases made this weekend will result in the customer daydreaming about acts of pointless destruction while queuing for their lip balm or whatever.

The fact that I was just there as an observer, to see the wheels of justice grind some poor bugger to mincemeat, was picked up on by the pack of feral journos outside the Courts. These chaps, I think, are just stationed there every morning on the off chance that some disgraced or disgraceful celeb is trying to sneak past them on their way to receive a bit of justice themselves. I don’t know why the journos bother, they could just use stock footage of a bloke scurrying into the court and then stock footage of a standard issue solicitor ‘making a statement on behalf of my client who maintains, despite the finding, that the girl was of the age of legal consent and, despite the evidence put forward in court, loves animals and would certainly never do anything like that to a swan. He has asked for privacy at this difficult time’.

I was there, on the job so to speak, to see a member of the public try to convince a judge that what we get up to in the office was illegal. I was under strict instructions from at least three different lawyers not to speak to the chap, even if spoken to and not to identify who I was. This was, I hope because of the seriousness of the case and the way these things are dealt with and not, as I suspect is the truth, because I’m a liability who thinks a useful way to spend my day is lolling around the RCJ café, swilling tea and waiting for our case to kick off.

The RCJ is a fascinating place. I used to think that wealth and privilege smelled like beeswax furniture polish, or wet dog, or gun oil. Well, it may do, but power smells like marble dust. The whole place has marble floors and wood panelled walls so deep and dark that I think the wood used is actually Ent, and you just KNOW that’s not sustainable. Barristers stalk the corridors like scruffy crows. The rule of thumb is, the more disreputable your suit (cut just so to artfully conceal several long lunches too many, and we all know how game pie settles), the more stained your wig, the more venerable you are.

The actual rule is that the bigger your wig, the more important you are and the biggest wigs of all are worn by the judges – they look like spaniels on steroids.

It was fascinating to watch the judge in action. Even though the ruling went against the chap making his plea for justice (he’s off to the European court of course, to plead his case, along with prisoners who feel their human rights are being infringed if they can’t keep a pony in their cells and so on) the chap still felt he had his day in court.

I think he picked up his flamethrower at the door on the way out, I didn’t see him leave as the view is obscured if you’re hiding in the gents.