Judge For A Day

I've just devoted part of my evening to reading the judgement in this legal case, which Paul O'Brien linked to. It's fascinating on multiple levels for me - I find the basic facts of the case hilarious (a work of modern art was supposed to be being stored by the defendants, but in fact they seemingly mistook it for rubbish created by building work, and threw it away), as a businessman (it's a side of me I do my best to conceal and suppress, but it's still in there) I'm horrified that the company didn't make sure to include their terms and conditions in correspondence with their clients (you ALWAYS do that, in case something like this does happen!), and generally speaking, I'm always intrigued and enthralled by the obscure workings of the legal process. I had to do an exam in business and company law for my accountancy qualifications, and even though it involved a lot of writing rather than number-crunching, and a lot of questions where there isn't a single right answer (something I hate more than anything else in the universe, except kiwi fruit), I enjoyed it a lot.

In fact, I rather think I'd like to be a judge, or as a second choice a lawyer. I appreciate that a lot of it would be boring and routine, and another lot of it would involve extremely unpleasant delving into the motives and reasoning of unpleasant people, but I think it would be worth it for the occasions when you get to hear two opposing art experts arguing as to the value of Hole and Vessel II. Plus you get all the fun of pedantically observing the rule of law and/or interpreting it in ways that nobody, least of all the people who wrote the laws in the first place, has ever considered before. And then you get the fact that everyone looks up to you and thinks you're clever, which is always a bonus in any job. I'd go and look up how to be a judge now, but it's late, and you probably had to go to public school anyway.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to work out how to get better at hour cards. I did a practice today, attempting 30 packs and getting 27 right, exactly like at the WMC last year. But I have great difficulty getting beyond that level, and it's frustrating. I hate plateaus. Or is it plateaux? I don't like the things, anyway. If I attempt more packs, I get fewer of them correct, and it's been like that for a couple of years now. With everything else, I'm still gradually improving my best results (very, very slowly), but here I'm stuck.