We are home.
It has been the most insanely occupied burst of life over the past few days, and all I need to do now is to write my final assignment before Thursday and I have got nothing left to worry about.
After the last week or so this feels like a breeze.
Actually it is not exactly fair to pretend that today has been horrible and stressful, because in fact it wasn’t really. We woke up in the car park in Barrow, and struggled into our respectable clothes whilst keeping the dogs firmly at arm’s length.
This was not as easy as you might think. I can tell you here that Rosie and tights do not make a good pairing, most especially because regular readers might recollect that I caught her dragging them all over the bedroom a couple of weeks ago, and just stuffed them back into the box without inspecting them for damage.
I now know this to have been folly.
Fortunately I was wearing a long skirt and long boots, so no puppy-related misfortunes were visible, and Mark was wearing his new trousers and looked smart enough for both of us.
We trooped into the court, which was very handily just across the road, and were given a short lecture by the barrister about how to behave in court. It was only a magistrates’ court, and hence I was surprised to find that there was not only a barrister, but also a judge, none of your respectable-lay-members-of-the-public roped in to decide the fates of their peers. This was the Big Time.
None of them needed to inspect anybody’s tights for ladders, so that was okay.
There followed an absolutely interminable wait.
The gentleman accused of driving the illegal taxi was representing himself. I would just like to say here, in case Boris Johnson is reading this, that I think this is an absolute travesty of justice, and an unfairness in the extreme. The legal aid system is a national shame. He could not afford to pay a clever barrister and so was left trying to marshal his own defence in a badly-fitting suit, which was really not at all fair, and also, muppet as I thought he was, took a great deal of courage.
If anybody disagrees with this can I recommend that you read the splendidly entertaining books written by the Secret Barrister, and also hope very hard that you never find yourself inadvertently in trouble.
Anyway, because of the self-representation everything took ages. I do not exactly know what was said to him, or what he said, because obviously being a witness I was not allowed to go in and watch, and so missed almost all of it.
In the end of course my turn came around, and I stood in the witness box to be questioned first by the clever barrister, who understood the law, and secondly by the illegal driver, who very clearly did not.
The latter was very cross with me.
He said that I was a malicious fibber, and that I was in cahoots with the council to spoil his business. I had some sympathy for this attitude, although regular readers will understand that it is unlikely to be the case. A less likely scenario than me plotting with the council for the downfall of a misfortunate taxi driver, I can scarcely imagine.
Nor, I think, could the council.
Mark was after me and suffered similar improbable insults, including an accusation of harassment, which was equally unlikely. I cannot imagine anything that might interest Mark less than the activities of some dodgy optimist with an illegal taxi.
Anyway, eventually it was over, and we escaped into the sunshine. We did not hang around for the verdict, largely because of the sunshine, but of course he was found guilty, and fined, and told not to do it again. He would have been found guilty even with a solicitor, except a decent solicitor would have told him to plead guilty in the first place, and thus saved everybody a whole lot of time and messing about.
After that we went to the beach.
I am sorry to say that we were too tired to divest ourselves of more than the outward and most uncomfortable trappings of respectability, being the tights, jackets and tie, and went paddling in our respectable clothes. The dogs belted all over the beach, barking their heads off, and Rosie leaped into the water, where she sloshed around a very great deal, so now our respectable clothes are very muddy and sandy, but I expect they will wash all right.
This part of the day was absolutely glorious, and we strolled along the beach thinking how very fortunate we were, because probably nobody else in that whole court had got some muddy dogs and a camper van and an afternoon on the beach.
We had dinner, and a glass of wine, and a little sleep, and finally chugged home, to unpack, sandily and sleepily, around the exhausted dogs, who did not want to get out of the camper van and for the holiday to be over.
Assignment tomorrow. Expect tomorrow night’s entry to be very boring and short.
