To the Supreme Court, then veering away

Lord Sumption 
from afar

Fry's Five Boys was a chocolate bar which offended me when I was a child. There was only one grimacing infant, photographed five times. Bar and wrapper said: Desperation, Pacification, Expectation, Acclamation, Realization - "It's Fry's". 

I learned from it that life was about some foolish grown-up imposing the wrong words in the wrong order. It was discontinued when the Sex Pistols arrived. There is nothing of the chocolate bar about the five law lords but I have an atavistic moment. 

Lord Hope

I'm sitting at the back, unable to see faces clearly, miles away across the tundra. 


British Airways plc v Williams and others is about pilots' holiday pay. QCs are hurling the kitchen sink at the issues. 'Habitats Directive'...'dredging rights'...'complicated Dutch competition case'... Three people notice that they are being sketched from afar. Each puts a hand up to his face. 

Lord Mance

At lunchtime I clean charcoal off my hands, face and shoulders. I eat a prawn sandwich and a Kit Kat in the basement cafe. The leading QC is asked, 'Still or sparkling?' He comments to his colleague that sparkling is a bad choice when you're on your feet. 


I meet a friend who has come from the volunteer Olympic drivers' Park Lane operations room. Things there are tense: it's the phoney war. Her Swatch Olympic watch, designed not to set off security alarms, sets off the Supreme Court security alarm. 

Lord Walker

Out in the sun we spot shiny Olympic BMWs being driven round Parliament Square en route to the stadium. Their Munich-controlled satnav has a left-leaning tendency. You can tell which drivers give the satnav credence: they are the ones who suddenly barge to the right (desperation) to avoid being swept up to Trafalgar Square and ignominy. 


I am off topic. But the volunteer Olympic drivers have each been issued with a time-killing 'game' (pacification) of such crassness that I reproduce the first page here:

Drawing at the Supreme Court

There was a big moth on the carpet when I looked in on the Equitable Life trial in the High Court, hoping to squeeze some entertainment value out of my ex-pension. A regular told me it stayed there for days, getting deader and deader.

Court usher

No dead moth would stand a chance in the Supreme Court: this is high-maintenance five-star accommodation, with oil paintings, stained glass and carved oak public benches upholstered in bottle-green imitation leather (or is it real? I didn't sniff it). Students, dazed tourists and self-conscious schoolchildren come and go. 

Knives aren't allowed so I forget about trying to sharpen charcoal pencils and end up smearing my face with burnt sticks as usual. You need telescopic sights for an adequate view of the law lords; I get engrossed in the backs of wigs instead. It would be appropriate, but frowned on, to draw with tacky, lanolin-scented, yellowing sheepswool dipped in a saucer of black ink. Or, failing that, a goose-feather quill.

Laura John,
Monckton Chambers

Your drawing materials must be silent: the High Court hubbub of multiple keyboards and fidgeting isn't present here. I keep rasping to a minimum - no extravagant sweeps across the paper, just polite little sketchy-sketchy movements. When you stand for the law lords to enter and depart, the silence is cosmic. You could be in the velvet depths of outer space. Or at prayer. As the leading QC possibly is.

The appeal, BCL Old Co Limited and others v BASF plc and others, is fiercely technical, about the timing of a dispute involving a vitamins-for-pigs cartel. The QC, on his feet all day before a firing-squad of five law lords, explores the accepted methods of contradiction. 'With respect, not, my lord,' is a good one. 

It's mesmerising. Lord Mance catches a famous courtroom echo when he says, 'One might comment that the tribunal would say that.' [Yoof please note: he's harking back to Mandy Rice-Davies. Now use a search engine as I'm tired of explaining things.]

Lord Phillips from a distance

I go to the bright white basement cafe for lunch. I eat a small plastic-packed cold pasta salad with olives, sun-dried tomatoes and basil, and a Wispa.

In the afternoon session, a law lord uses 'begs the question' to mean 'raises the question'. It used to mean 'avoids the question'.  Another distinction in the language flutters its wings feebly, like a dying moth. 

Lord Walker from a distance

On a housekeeping note, there is inadequate provision of lavatories for lawyers and public alike - what were the architects thinking? We need quantity, not fancy unisex cubicles with a Dyson hand drier inside - and adding a mirror is just asking for trouble.

Lord Wilson from a distance

Supreme Court carpet

Lord Mance from a distance when my
blood sugar is low