I am dying, Europe, dying

I've just done a swathe of English things.

I don't normally watch telly at 9am but this is Hue and Cry, the Ealing comedy/adventure from 1947, a love-letter to bombed-out London. Street kids in hand-me-downs outwit the powerful enemy. The population is lean; sugar and meat still rationed; the NHS unborn.

The kids escape along sewer tunnels without waders. Amid the odd fist-fight, the film celebrates kindness, inclusion and defence of the weak. You know, those values we're chucking down the sewer.

I set out for the anti-Brexit march. A Christian is proselytising on the bus: 'Egypt means house of bondage,' he says. Babylon. But there are very few police needed on this demo.

In Park Lane we wait calmly for an hour and a half while coaches from the provinces disgorge polite campaigners. Damn, I've forgotten my Soho House membership card. I'd rather be a member of the EU though. I'm with a friend whose work is endangered by Brexit. He designs MRI scanners. Nah, we don't need those any more. We protest along Piccadilly, nip in to use the loos in a club off St James's, and end up in front of the speeches in Parliament Square. Gallant losers. Numbers are estimated at between 25,000 to 100,000.

I walk up Bond Street, past some contemptuous demo-chic. 

I turn to the best bit in The Times, the obituary column. Lucky Gordon is dead. He became a building block in the end of deference when his face was slashed by a jealous lover of Christine Keeler. What could expose the tribal English more than the Profumo affair - aristocracy, cruelty, hypocrisy, sex, money, drugs, Soho, Notting Hill, a fall guy driven to suicide - and the disapproving prism of a restricted childhood through which I uncomprehendingly read the gloating reports in Beaverbrook's Daily Express. 

I'm going to the RSC (kept alive by taxpayers, punters and corporate sponsors, all of whom will take a harsher view of their spend after Brexit).

I swot up by reading Plutarch's life of Julius Caesar: 'Writer after writer had entered the bitter controversy. Britain was just a name and a legend, they said; the island did not exist and never had existed. Now Caesar attempted to conquer it, and advanced the Roman Empire beyond the bounds of the human world. He sailed twice to the island from the opposite shore in Gaul, and in a long sequence of battles he did more damage to the enemy than good to his own men, for there was nothing worth taking from a people of such wretched poverty.'

I'm in denial. Brexit won't happen.

Supreme Court: ICLR OU mooting competition grand final

My safe word is remain.

That’s how I was going to begin this post when I thought that the case behind today's competition was R v Brown (Operation Spanner), about consent to sado-masochistic acts which incur actual bodily harm. I was polishing an analogy with Brexit.

But I hadn’t read the brief properly so I prepared for the wrong case. Are barristers’ nightmares made of this? Plus being bombarded by what Lady Hale cheerfully calls horrible questions? Quick, what’s the test for calculating the measure of damages in contract? What’s the test for direct discrimination? What are the facts of Schnorbus v Land Hessen?

Lady Hale is judging the ICLR Open University Law Society mooting competition. The level of nerves looks normal – even starry QCs can blush or address Lady Hale as ‘my Lord’, so the four finalists have nothing to worry about on that score.

Jacqueline Roque by Picasso

This court is not judgmental about looks but the Erin-O’Connor/Jacqueline-Roque-looking finalist can come back and model for Picasso.

The moot question involves a gay wedding, religious convictions and a contract to supply photography and catering.

I am pathetically relieved to see that I know a little about two of the authorities mentioned in the notes – Preddy v Bull, which I sat in on here as Bull v Hall, and Gough v the UK concerning the Naked Rambler, two of whose appearances I attended at Winchester Crown Court.

Top tip for contestants: if there’s a microphone, it’s your friend, so know where it is. Old hands take time to adjust a desk mike if necessary.











Another tip: criteria plural, criterion singular. That gets clocked here. Along with everything else.








And a final tip for life from Lady Hale: ‘When you realise you’re on to a loser, you move on to the next point.’

After giving what is in effect a tutorial, she compliments the finalists on standing up to her interrogation very well. ‘I must be a natural sadist,’ says Lady Hale.

Carnival Captured exhibition

The Carnival Village Trust have just held a multi-media art competition to mark 50 years of the Notting Hill Carnival. 

There is a free exhibition of selected entries at the Tabernacle, 34-35 Powis Square, W11 2AY, until 5 March 2017, 10am-9pm.

I won second prize in the 18+ category with these five drawings. Elimu Carnival Band and Paddington Arts kindly allow me to draw people getting ready in the morning. It's indoors, and quiet, with a proper chair. 

This photograph, taken in 1994 by Chandra Prasad, is the competition winner. It looks at skin but is the only image in the show which gets under the skin of the carnival. No one is smiling. Hard to date (and hard to photograph in the gallery lighting), it's in one of those parts of Notting Hill haunted by Peter Rachman.

And do you know who this woman is? She was dancing at last year's carnival. It would be nice to find her before the exhibition ends. This photo, by Denise Turley, shared third prize.

Thanks are due to the competition benefactors - Arts Council England, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Tabernacle and the Westway Trust.

Job application

Dear Ms Hawkins,

We are writing to apply for the post of President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom on a job-sharing basis.

We note that high judicial office is a requirement for the post [it isn't - ed]. We sit at a height of five feet on our retail display point, which gives us an advantage over other applicants. Our bench, being made of glass, offers complete transparency.

We have observed with pleasure the Court’s thoughtful gesture in placing the TV monitors so that, while fulfilling our duties in the cafeteria, we can hear the oral submissions.

We exist in multiples, so we can be in more than one place at a time – something denied to the present incumbent although we believe he would find it extremely useful.

While we have travelled in the briefcases of many senior legal entities and shared their boudoirs, we are noted for our discretion, even though our eyes really do follow you round the room.

Our contribution to debate would be modest; our judgments would be noted for brevity, or even for total absence; and we would find the interview stage of this application rather challenging; but the role which we are proud to uphold in society would make it impossible for us to be defined as ‘enemies of the people’.

As some of our friends in the USA may need to be reminded, we represent a voice, albeit a very quiet one, for unity: E PLURIBUS URSUS.

Yours respectfully,

The bears of the Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council

PS We regret that our application was unsuccessful, so we have been busy with our helpful book, The Supreme Court: A Guide for Bears.

Supreme Court: council policy out of the window

Blind cord, Court 2

First up, phobias. Poshteh v Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is about post traumatic stress disorder, not phobia, but I’m going to link them as they both enrage people who apply terms such as ‘reasonable’, ‘objectivity’ and ‘pull yourself together’.

My first memory is of being scared witless by some geezer with a fake white beard and red hood. Later, as a student, I was being paid to chop vegetables in a private house on Christmas day. The grandfather crept up behind me in costume and said, ‘Don’t peek, it’s Santa Claus.’ I spun round in terror and to this day I marvel that I didn't stab him as a reflex.

This case also involves an asylum-seeker. The Royal Borough once asked me to draw at an event for looked-after children, some of whom had been asylum-seekers or refugees. Some were from Eritrea. Some had arrived in this country alone. They were a great bunch, and they will always be ambassadors. 

So, as a nation, let’s not turn our back on more kids like these, eh? While we allow rich people from overseas to buy properties and leave them empty?

Empty or full, the housing stock in Kensington and Chelsea is varied. Slapdash Victorian speculators, Peter Rachman and the Luftwaffe have all left their mark. 




Nowadays, casual violations of planning and conservation rules pop up like weeds. Together with legally permitted vanity projects. And don’t get me started on the basements. If there isn't enough room for you and your cigar storage around here, go to Bracknell.

Today’s case concerns Vida Poshteh who was tortured and imprisoned in Iran. She applied for asylum in the UK; she and her child were housed temporarily by RBKC. 

She was offered permanent accommodation in a housing association flat with a round living-room window but on viewing it she had a panic attack and turned the flat down. She suffers from PTSD and her prison cell had a round window. No one is suggesting that she is lying. The council says she should just live there anyway.

The bench proffers suggestions – that she should maybe put a curtain over the round window or never go into the living room. 

This is kindly meant, but to a PTSD-sufferer it is likely to have overtones of the bloody chamber.

For a couple of seconds we see a photo of the living room

The council says that the window is three feet in diameter, set in a wall five feet three inches wide. There is a rectangular window in the same room. It sounds like some unpardonable jeu d’esprit on the part of an architecture student.

Ms Poshteh’s undoing in the Court of Appeal seems to have been that she had initially agreed to live in that flat on a temporary basis. The council wished to construe this as permanent. But sometimes you might just say things to get authority figures off your back. Ms Poshteh has been served with an eviction notice. Happy Christmas.

Window fastenings in Court 2 look like handcuffs

Satanic yoga

Yoga in Black, described unofficially if not on the website as satanic, recoils from modish body fascism. It is uncompetitive in kind lighting with a soundtrack - not too loud - described as dark ambient, doom metal, drone and Gothic rock.

The theme is acceptance. For those who know their chakras it's a variation of Dru yoga. There's plenty of movement and it looks achievable, unlike the contortionist stuff of the fanatics.

I barely notice the soft-sell paganism. My satanic experience doesn't happen until afterwards: a flat tyre in the cold, dark and rain. I wait for the AA. It's new year's day. Hours pass.

Just as I am thoughtfully examining the gel-filled pee bags kept in the glove box, someone emerges from the nearest house with several bags of  rubbish and recycling. 

I ask to use the lavatory. And when the repair man turns up, I take up the sainted Lucia's offer of refuge with her family for the hour it takes him to fix the tyre. Her bossy Dachsund called Colin teaches me a ball game. This is the closest I get to a family Christmas.

More pictures if you scroll down.

Supreme Court: contract and carols

There was much chortling in-jokery last week about Lord Sumption’s ties at the four-day Article 50 hearing. Today, Jeeves has clearly returned from his holiday but there are no fervid rune-readers here to report that Lord Sumption is wearing an EU-blue tie with what could from a distance be gold stars on it. They are probably polka dots.

Today’s case is about contract and trusts. It refers to planning permission. Meanwhile the court has a planning application notice outside, as it is seeking to replace an oak floor which has a romantic creak like a ship in full sail. I hope the sound gets archived before the timbers are shivered.

BPE Solicitors and another v Hughes-Holland (in substitution for Gabriel) is the latest in a strand of litigation stemming from a discussion in ‘the Red Hart public house’ in 2007 between two friends: Richard Gabriel is the godfather of one of Peter Little’s children. Mr Gabriel agreed to lend Mr Little’s company £200,000 towards developing a property at Kemble Airfield (Cotswold Airport), formerly the base of the Red Arrows.

I google Cotswold Airport. In its AV8 restaurant ‘you will be able to watch the world fly by in a classy atmosphere with a distinctly Mediterranean feel, something that you do not come across very often in the UK.' I guess that's why I voted Remain.

The property was not developed, the loan was not repaid. Mr Gabriel chose, as counsel puts it today, 'to roll the dice of litigation’. Can he recover from his solicitors the money he lost, and did they have a duty to protect him from the loss? Are Dickens and Kafka playing consequences?

At lunchtime, the Treasury Singers arrive for their annual charity carol concert, this year for Crisis. 

We are ushered into the lofty anarcho-gothic-pre-Raphaelite library (normally off-limits), which has been camped up with pine garlands and poinsettias. Justices pop in. The Supreme Court’s misdescribed Can’t Sing Choir join in with relish and don Santa hats for the finale, We Wish You a Merry Christmas. There is an earnest endeavour that touches the flinty heart. 

I go to the café where my friend does some quick and easy Christmas shopping, including a teddy bear for a baby.