h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm sitting in the internet cafe on my second stint of the day, waiting for you to report back on your moot evening. Was it clever? Was the wine any good afterwards? We need to know, douglas...

Hello Dagesh - I've only just noticed your message: I tend to browse using Susan's login, and, besides, generally only look at journal conversations.

Anyhow, how did the moot go? Well, Aiberdeen got beat by Strathclyde, but it was, like Waterloo, a demme close-run thing. Aiberdeen had one really really good speaker but less than perfect teamwork, whereas Strathclyde had two ezy-ozy speakers but a well worked-out team plan. The Sheriff presiding asked the Strathclyde speakers at one point to say what the Scots Law equivalent of Estoppel was (they had used the term when quoting from an English case) and they genuinely didn't know that it is Personal Bar, and that's Year 1 law stuff. Still, they won.

It was actually quite funny that the Sheriff presiding knew me of old - I used to do housing/eviction cases in the courts up here, for 15 years or so - and was happily chatting away to me, whereas he didn't have a word to say to the one lecturer in the room... Well, it does MY image no harm whatsoever. I have appeared before this particular Sheriff many many times and, until I came to law school, knew him as a bit of a joker - informal, approachable, fair, efficient, level-headed - but since coming to law school I have read some of his books and articles (there have been a great many) and now realise that he is also a brilliant lawyer (of course, this should be a pre-requisite of being a judge of any sort - a job that I could never ever do). He is actually rather admired by many of the mooting society mainstays, and has an evident committment to legal education.

Then Susan and I went to the Bobbin for a pint (me lager, she cola), had a bag of chips and went home. We were, I can confidently say, the two oldest people in the bar, and felt like fishes out of water - Susan less so than me, cos' I look like a geezer whereas Susan will always pass in company. Ochone! Dagesh, the place is like one of Dante's Circles of Hell - hot and airless, garish colours, noise, writhing bodies all packed together and Madonna flaunting her bum on a giant screen.


Douglas