Taking The Piss

For American readers, "Taking The Piss" = taking advantage of in a very unfair way, pulling a scam, abusing one's position. Also means "making fun of" in a different context.

Now that is just taking the piss (Image source)

You have heard all the stories about a looming water shortage. Does it not seem strange that in a summer so far not particularly memorable for its endless days of brilliant blue skies and scorching sunshine we are warned that a serious water shortage is imminent. What has really caught the attention of Headbutt Blog's relentless hunter of cant and hypocrisy Ed. Butt is the call by the Mayor of London to refrain from flushing each time you pee.

There is an old maxim in low rainfall nations like Australia, "if its yellow its mellow, if its brown flush it down," although having spent a lot of time in London I know this should be revised for Londoners; "if its yellow its mellow, if its brown and tastes of shit its probably drinking water." Yep, the product of London Water is perhaps not of the best quality to start with. Another old joke relating to the recycling of water in the British capital it that London Water Company takes quality control very seriously, in fact all the water Londoners drink has been passed by qualified chemists.

Flushing is not environmentally friendly The Mayor tells us, perhaps he should explain what is environmentally friendly about letting millions of gallons of water leak away through fractures in the hundred and fifty year old pipes.

Pee is environmentally friendly anyhow, lots of gardeners collect theirs and put it on the compost. I suppose it gives the marigolds an especially bright hue. A hundred and fifty years ago (around the time the water mains were being laid) the urine of pregnant women was highly prized for its use in something I would probably rather not think about. Urine is a very underrated commodity.

As well as its role in ayurvedic medicine (which again I would rather not think about) it was for centuries used in tanning and in the dyeing of cloth. Our revulsion at stuff that comes out of the body is therefore modern and bourgeois. The cried of "yeuch, disgusting" that greeted Livingstone's suggestion are entirely the product of modern urban prissiness. Country folk are not victims of such delicate sensibilities, I speak as a country lad who once failed a school spelling test because the crucial word was "auspices".

What should outrage us is that a senior public official is blame shifting again. Livingstone is saying "there is a water shortage because you irresponsible, binge - drinking bastards are pissing too often, so you can suffer." Actually the problems exist because of mismanagement in the privatised utility companies. For every pound they spend on giving you a good service to your premises they spend ten on employing people in Mumbai to harass you with a million unsolicited marketing calls a day.

And that really is taking the piss.



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Enfoncez Votre Fromage M. Chirac

There is nothing like a bit of xenophobic name calling to get us all in the holiday mood. As President Chirac has kicked off about British food, suggesting it is the worst in Europe (except for Finland - I wonder what they did to him?) I think that conveniently excuses me from the need to be diplomatic.
Half the fun of being English of course is that it is our patriotic duty to say outrageously insulting things about the French. Half the fun of being French, my French friends tell me, is that it is a patriotic duty to say outrageously insulting things about the English. On with the motley.
A fat lot of room Chirac has to talk about crappy English food. The French will eat anything. One regional delicacy in Lorraine province consists of cow's noses thinly sliced and sautéed in garlic butter. Sometimes I think the French would eat dog turds if they were sautéed in garlic butter. Another French delicacy is lamb's tongues. I have often taken to task those American fast food chains whose products contain mainly lips and arseholes. French haute cuisine chefs go further however, they serve snot and saliva. Another French delicacy is pigs feet. Next time you are passing a pig pen just take a look what those trotters have been marinating in before they land on your plate.
Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, spotted dick and custard, faggots and peas, bangers and mash; all these have been celebrated in verse. Scottish Haggis which Chirac described as a weapon of mass destruction (that's rich coming from a man who eats cow's noses) is the subject of a famous verse by Scotland's national poet Robert Burns.
"Fair fa your honest sonsie face,
great chieftain o' the pudding race,
aboon them a' ye tak your place,
painch, tripe and thairm.
Weel worthy are ye o' a grace
as lang's my arm."
So there! I'll bet pigs feet have never inspired such eloquence.
The Gleneagles Hotel where the G8 conference is being held will be serving a traditional Scottish banquet in honour of the world's leaders. Let's hope that for the benefit of M. Chirac the menu includes that Glaswegian favourite Deep Fried Mars Bar.
BTW: For the benefit of politically correct type who infiltrate this site from time to time, I love French food (though I tend to pass on cows noses) The comments of M. Chirac were meant humourously and should be taken as such, as should this posting. For God's sake, what kind of a world would it be if the French and the English could not insult each other. We would have to gang up on the Dutch. (Belgium is to France what Wales is to England.)

G8 protest movement
the rich get richer
America and G8
Chirac and Blair
Chirac and Haggis
Spotted Dick
Ian Thorpe Interview and Multi Media performance in Poetry Life and Times
Go over the top with Ian Thorpe at Boggart Blog

Islamic Suicide Bombers - Dead Scary (Fear and Panic #3)

Image source

When security forces in Iraq announce they are stepping up efforts to locate and capture "know suicide bombers" I am afraid, I am very afraid. Its is not that I fear our suburban streets are patrolled by men with exploding beards waiting for an opportune moment before they blow me up. No, it is the security forces that scare me, I mean "known suicide bombers," the first rule of warfare, I leaned in history lessons long ago, is know your enemy. It strikes me that our military have not really got their heads round the basic concept of suicide bombing if they are looking for people with a track record.

Similarly President Bush recently spoke of "cowardly attacks by suicide bombers" in his feeble attempt to bolster support for the war by spreading Fear and Panic among ordinary Americans, most of whom are at least 5000 miles from the nearest known suicide bomber. Suicide is often described as the coward's way out when someone in our western society decides to end it all rather than face up to the mess they have made of everything. That is a rather harsh assessment in a lot of cases, it must often seem to people that life just cannot get any better. It takes something other than cowardice for somebody to stick several kilos of Semtex and a detonator to their body, drive or walk calmly up to the target and hit the trigger.

To a young Arab though, suicide is a very different prospect and suicide bombers can be described as many things, stupid, fanatical, insane etc. But surely not cowardly, and especially not by a man who orders the forces he commands to drop bombs from 30,000 feet on civilian targets in third world countries that have no credible defence systems. The suicide bomber is at least up close and personal and prepared not just to take a calculated risk in order to spread Fear and Panic, they have to face the certainty of joining their victims on the journey to "that unexplored country from in whose bourne no traveller returns," which Shakespeare referred to.

Always a great believer in looking at the big picture I see things rather differently than when they are viewed from the perspective of somebody who seeks political advantage by spreading Fear and Panic. It is a question of understanding the Arab mindset. To them death is not something to be avoided but to be embraced, death offers better prospects than life. Suicide Bombing therefore represents the best available career option. Sign up and you are guaranteed three meals a day and a heroes welcome on your last visit home plus, and get this everybody, twenty - yes twenty (or twenty four, or seventy two depending on who you believe) heavenly virgins waiting for you on the other side.

Compare that with working as a menial for the American company that is ripping off your country's oil or a life of poverty and drudgery as a tomato farmer, both of which carry the certainty of an arranged marriage to a girl whose face you will not see until the ring is on her finger.

No wonder those boys are saying "pass the semtex and tell the virgins to lay in a supply of KY jelly."

Iraqi Insurgency
The BBC view
The Arab Viewpoint

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Bring Out Your Dead

The tumbrils are ready in SW17, the charnel houses of South London are preparing for an influx of customers.
Like virgins to the altar (oops sorry; this is not a Solstice piece) like lambs to the ritual slaughter Britain's young tennis hopefuls will be taken through the streets the place of execution, The All England Club where they will kneel before axepersons with names like Federer, Roddick, Williams and Clijsters. The axe usually falls mercifully quickly to cut off careers that had promised so much.
Every year at this time sports pundits ask why can Britain not produce a contender. And ghostly eminences of Andrew Castle, Chris Bailey and Annabel Croft rattle their chains and cry "I cudda been a contender." But seriously, could they? The dichotomy (Ian shows off his Guardian reader vocabulary there,) of British sport is that while we want our champions to win we do not want them to be winners. Thus is the British hope condemned forever to be the jolly nice chap or chapess who is nearly great. This is why Tiger Tim never quite made it of course, (apart from being saddled with a nickname taken from an under-5s comic character) he is just to well brought up. You can imagine him, when his opponent slams a second serve into the net to go three match points down, saying "oh jolly hard luck old chap," instead of suggesting that the opponent will soon eat excrement. British players might say an umpire's decision is rather harsh but would never suggest the official has an unnatural relationship with his mother.
English Tennis is about strawberries and cream, cucumber sandwiches and being a good loser.
Now who could imagine John MacEnroe eating cucumber sandwiches? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! Johnny Mac was who he was because he ate steaks, raw steaks still attached to the carcass of a bull that had not yet been slaughtered. Do you hear what I am saying?
Winners are red in tooth and claw and if we ever want the annual slaughter of our innocents to cease we must find or make winners. Here is my five point plan.
(1) Identify promising youngsters at junior school level.
(2) Take them away from their parents in Surrey or Hampshire and send them to live with the Gallaghers from Shameless on a sink estate in Manchester until they are sixteen.
(3) If they survive to sixteen give them jobs as trainees in a Gordon Ramsey kitchen.
(4) After two years of that introduce them to the world of professional sport by appointing Mike Tyson as their personal fitness instructor.
(5) Once they are fit, find the school bully who made their young life hell, put him / her in an enclosed tennis court, equip the future champion with a tennis racquet and immunity from prosecution. If the bully is dead within five minutes or alternatively survives more than two hours of extreme pain and humiliation, hire the best tennis coach in the world and commence lessons.

Wimbledon
Tim Henman
John McEnroe
Andrew Castle, presenter on TVAM and Former Future Wimbledon Champion
Annabel Croft, Celebrity Wrestling victor and Former Future Wimbledon Champion
Annabel's wrestling career
Shameless - Channel 4 comedy drama
Greenteeth

BRITSPEAK

Some American academics are concerned about the number of British slang words and colloquialisms that are finding their way into the pure and beautiful American language after being picked up from TV shows and films. One particular individual who shall be nameless because he is probably the type of small minded, humourless bastard who would sue, is getting his knickers in a right old twist and throwing hissy fits about it every chance he gets. And what are these colloquialisms he finds so irritatingly un-American? Well his favourites are "gone missing" and "at the end of the day."

When I read this I was like "No Way! That is just so not true. British street slang, gone missing? As if? And it isn't like we are not hearing Americanisms 24/7 is it.

The good professor feels that "gone missing" is a typical example of sloppy British grammar and should never be used instead of that Fine, upright, stars-and-stripes-waving, silver-ring-thinging Americanism "gone astray."
It is a generalisation and very unfair to say that Americans do not get irony, but there is a certain class of American of whom that is true. The "aspirational middle class" not only do not do irony, they do not do humour at all. And so the effect of "gone missing" is lost on them. When something has gone missing it implies an act of will was involved. Things go astray in the mail, people go missing with the funds from the social club. Other than that, gone astray is no more American than Apple Pie (which is actually German, it was brought to Britain by the Saxons.) "Gone astray" is perfectly standard English grammar and to use it where "gone missing" is more appropriate it to condemn us all to that sterile and colourless version of English spoken by corporate managers, the style immortalised in that early Microsoft Grammar checker that would have had us change references to Dick Van Dyke into Penis van Lesbian.

Whatever.

The other phrase singled out for attention is "at the end of the day." Now I can't understand how this was noticed as BBC America does not screen Football Focus, nor even Soccer Focus. "At the end of the day" does not strike me as particularly British, in fact it has the idiom of those American management buzz words and phrases that began to creep into the language in the 1970s. You know, the ones that use ten words when one would do, "at this moment in time" instead of "now", "we have an ongoing situation" instead of "we're clueless," etc.

We are told however that it is mightily offensive to use "at the end of the day" instead of that modest and unpretentious phrase "in the end." Now when have you ever heard an American say "in the end" rather than "in the final analysis." American English loves wordiness, police officers say "I need for you to stand up" instead of just "stand up please," salesmen say "I have to meet with" rather than "I have to meet," blind to the sheer impossibility of meeting yourself.

Americans also have this tendency to overqualify, where we would go horse riding, an American goes horseback riding. What other part of a horse would you ride FFS (Guys who are into bestiality need not answer). optical aids, a British person would simply say, my vision is not what it used to be, I need to get some glasses, but an American would call them eyeglasses? What other kind of glasses would you get to help you read a book, a pair of shot glasses? Champagne glasses? Real estate? Who would buy fake estate?

At the end of the day of course, these are trivial matters but annoying because it is another example of America's habit of claiming everything as its own, for example, splitting the atom, inventing the computer, Catherine Zeta Jones, apple pie and now the English language.

With respect to our American friends here at Boggart Blog we think it is time we fought back. We should recruit bloggers around the world, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Pakistan and we should overwhelm American academic institutions with slang, patois, lingua franca and parliari.

American my khyber! They'll soon be on their twos and threes begging for mercy if we start to throw rhyming slang at them. After a few days the guy who started this bollocks will be as sick as a parrot if he comes near this gaff. This is a place where we celebrate English like what it is spoke.

I will start tomorrow if I can find a window in my diary.

Parliari (Polari) the underground slang - aka parliari - was orignially used by travellers and circus folk. Later it evolved into Polari, the slang of showbusiness people, prostitutes, drug users and homosexuals, people who might not want morally uptight individuals knowing what they were talking about.

If you are as irreverent as I am here is the Bible in polari
Online slang dictionary
Cockney Rhyming Slang
more rhyming slang
The dictionary of britspeak
The Greenteeth Labyrinth

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God's Little Careers Consultants

In a week that has witnessed controversy in the UK after an advertisment for The Church Of England, showing somebody reciting The Lord's Prayer was banned from being shown in theatres where the new star Wars film is being shown by the movie's distributors, which prompted us to ask how would Christians feel if Jedi Knights invaded a church service and used The Force to make bibles and hymn books float around and gargoyles sing bawdy songs, it is perhaps time to revive this post:

Yoda Gets Christianity (Image source)

New guidelines issued by the Greek Orthodox Church bar former gynaecologists, lawyers, actors and magicians from ordination as priests. The detailed list sets out acceptable jobs for candidate clerics, including former carpenters, teachers, nurses, politicians and former officers in the police and military. Other considered unacceptable include tavern owners, money lenders and astrologers. Alas we could not discover whether nail technicians are excluded or not.

Now I can see the logic in wanting former carpenters after all there is a connection, but there seem to be a few anomolies here. Why politicians and not actors, surely there is little difference in the two trades. Actors spend all their time pretending to be someone they are not and politicians spend theirs pretending to be something they are not. Neither can I see why teachers will be accepted but not tavern owners. Most of us learn far more in the pub than we ever did at school. And why are astrologers not welcome, to go from astrologer (or Jedi Knight) to priest simply involves swapping one kind of unreality for another.

Magicians too seem to be very well qualified. "I want to to put this biscuit in your mouth and then take a little sip of wine as I say Abracadabra, and it will turn into the flesh and blood of the Messiah. Just like that. Lawyers too are ideal.

"I put it to you that on the third of May Mrs Papadopoulos and yourself went to the Corinthian motel and indulged in various lewd acts. Do not deny it Mr. Leandros, there are witnesses. You were seen by the hotel receptionist, the chambermaid and God.

Gynaecologists however is understandable. Who could know better that what most men think is heaven can look pretty unattractive in some circumstances.

Greek Orthodox Church
More info
Jonathan Cainer - astrologer
Pub Quiz website

The Children From Hell

Children are like farts, your own aren't so bad but anyone else's are horrible." How many times has that been said by people in my age group I wonder.

The Bash Street Kids (image source)

Having reached the brink of old-githood I can now look forward to being able to say "I love children, but only if they are served with Hollandaise sauce." A quip from comedian W.C. Fields of course, the comedian who claimed he had developed a look that could kill a child at 50 paces. Some readers may still be looking forward to spawning your own sprogs and playing happy families for a decade or so. Be warned, the sentimentalisation of children is just a cynical plot devised by the ruling elite to make us all abandon our carefree early adult years and conform. Trust me on this, the time between the two year old deciding that Mr. Ploppy likes to sit in the sugar bowl and the adolescent falling victim to hormone fuelled mood swings is of only a few days duration. Or so it seems for children eat time as they eat everything they can get their hands on (including Mr. Ploppy if they are young enough.)

The ruling elite easily dismiss fears about parenthood. Well they would, being able to afford nannies they need not see their disgusting offspring from immediately after the christening or naming ceremony to the insufferably trendy, until its is time to say "goodbye darling, we have enrolled you in an excellent school." Being able to delegate parental responsibility to the hired help until well after that awkward period when hair starts to sprout in funny places and body piercings start to sprout in the funny places where hair does not grow masks most of the horrors and actually lends parents a certain social cachet.

The incurably sentimental will by now be thinking "how can he be so heartless, children are a gift from God." Can people not see, children are from Hell.

I have always felt that somewhere along the line religion got it horribly wrong. If we accept the standard definition of God then He gave us mortality, guilt, war, disease, religion, the missionary position, Britney effing Spears, piles and children. On the other hand the Devil's works include recreational sex, recreational drugs, recreation, sex, Pamela Anderson, over indulgence and contraceptives. It’s a no brainer isn't it? Just as the world's most religious country keeps electing the wrong President the people who invented religion elected the wrong God. If the other guy had got in women would have deposited a tiny egg in a flower, cocooned it in silk and got on with their lives. Twenty one years later a fully formed adult would have emerged and taken its place in society without ever once having demanded Turkey Twizzlers, an iPod, a hoodie, expensive trainers or vast sums of money.

My anti - child stance can be traced back to the time when old fashioned bringing - up - kids, a process of trial and error that most of us seemed to negotiate without having to resort to nailing the little brats feet to the floor, suddenly morphed into parenting, a skill that had to be learned at great expense from people with degrees in childcare or worse still from self - help books written by Californian fuckwits or worthy but boring British ladies who take themselves far too seriously. Nowadays the parenting industry has grown to such an extent there are even TV shows dedicated to making struggling parents feel inadequate. In these shows Professional Nannies who bear a more than passing resemblance to Bette Davis, Rebecca de Mornay or Glenn Close knock into shape both children and parents by acting like a drill sergeant in the Paratroop regiment. The message is of course you will fail unless you SPEND SPEND SPEND.

So far neither of my offspring have shown the least inclination to make us Grandparents which is good as neither of us fancies smelling of urine, breaking out in hairy warts all over our faces or wearing cardigans. As people live longer and retain youthful attitudes into their seventies cloning starts to seem like a good option.

Copyright © 2005, Ian Thorpe

TV show Nanny 911-In the UK
and in the USA
Bette Davis in The Nanny
Review of the film

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Accept Everything, Question Nothing
A chilling poll published in the US has revealed that 40% of those born in the 21st century – the so-called ‘Millennials’ – believe government should be able to limit speech regarded as offensive to minorities. The older the generation, the more opposed to outlawing aspects of free speech. The 35-50 ‘Gen X’ group approval of such a move was 27%; for the Baby Boomers (51-69), approval dropped to 24%, whilst the oldest age group asked (70-80) registered just 12% approval.

Childhood drinking puts us on a slippery slope


Children and the government

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The First Dalek.....?

The First Dalek?
It is ironic that the reappearance of trans galactic villains The Daleks in the new series of Dr. Who, an episode subtitled The Last Dalek should coincide with the announcement of a new robot designed for use in hospitals to enable Doctors to make bedside visits while still cocooned in the safety of their office. Maybe the designers of the robot have a particularly cruel sense of humour because the first thing everybody noticed about the creation was its Dalek like appearance. Now the last thing anybody in hospital would want to see is an interstellar sociopath gliding up to the bedside, particularly as the Daleks are remembered for their catchphrase "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE."

But will the mechanised uber control - freaks be able to work alongside the human control freaks who manage hospitals?
The Daleks first appeared in 1963, long before political correctness had been invented and so their fascistic society gleefully set about annihilating ancient and beautiful cultures in distant galaxies without a thought for the possibility that the poor kiddiewinks watching might be traumatised. The kiddiwinks loved it of course though many grown - ups were traumatised by the constant sound of little boys running around yelling "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE" in robotic voices. No hoodies in those days but I helped my little brothers button overcoats to the neck and then put them on over the head so they could run around with one arm protruding from the gap between the buttons. We soon had little old ladies banging on the door complaining that they had been chased by headless overcoats.

Meanwhile the fictional Daleks on TV were behaving not much differently to the way the Bush administration deals with third world countries with rich and ancient cultures.

In the end Dr. Who had to destroy the Daleks after they had exterminated the race of Time Lords that inhabited the Doctor's home planet. Inevitably, a Dalek escaped, skipped to a different dimension as intergalactic evildoers are inclined to do - Osama Bin Laden for example is actually hiding out in President Bush's Oval office but in a different time - space continuum, and turned up as the possession of an American megalomaniac billionaire who keeps a menagerie of creatures from different dimensions in a giant underground complex of large, featureless rooms and long, bleak corridors. Come to think of it, that could have been any surface community in Utah. The Megalomaniac Billionaire wanted to learn the Dalek's secret so that he could recreate the ethos of ruthless race in his corporate hierarchy and use it to help him achieve world domination - megalomaniac billionaires are so predictable - and had broken the creature through torture and sarcasm.

By this point I was thinking "yes, the Daleks do bear a more than passing resemblance to hospital managers.
While the doctor is trying to convince the billionaire to destroy the Dalek however, it is befriended by time fellow - traveller played by the orchidaceous Billie Piper. Even the flinty heart of the semi automaton is melted by those beestung lips and bambi eyes and in the end the Dalek displays some human qualities.
At that point the whole mass of jokes about the new medical assistant Dalek collapse. Suspension of disbelief is one thing but who could ever get their head round the idea of a hospital manager showing human qualities?

Official Doctor Who website
Doctor Who - home of the cult
Doctor Who press archive
Hospital Service Robot
News Story

Sun, Sand and The Sweaty Feet Inspector

The Dalmatian coast of Croatia is a wonderful place to take a holiday, its sandy beaches are lapped by the azure waters of the Adriatic sea, its towns and villages are picturesque and imposing mountains rise steeply from the shore line. Visitors can enjoy reasonably priced food and absorb the rich local culture or they make just prefer to head for the beach and chill out while having their feet sniffed by a government inspector.

In a gobsmacking example of bureaucrats' ability to shoot themselves in the foot the Croatian tourist ministry, having noticed that the holiday trade is at last recovering from the hostilities in the area over the past fifteen years, decided to unveil a set of regulations aimed at ensuring "appropriate behaviour." This latest manifestation of the Balkan appetite for self - destruction, had it become law would have made the area a hotspot for serious foot fetishists but driven almost everybody else away.

Displaying authoritarian zeal bordering on Nazism the ministry has gone against the trend in other nations around the Mediterranean by attempting to instil a sense of decorum through stringently policed rules and regulations. Some of these even go beyond the standards required in prudish America. As well as the official foot sniffers the government would have appointed teams of babies nappy inspectors to check for adequate seals around the legs, banned from beaches women exposing their breasts or wearing thongs or "revealing sundresses", men in shorts, ice cream and cold drink vendors, picnics and make it a criminal offence to urinate in the sea (how did they plan to police that one? scuba divers?)

Now to say dress code is optional in European resorts is understatement. In more and more places dress is optional anywhere near the beach. We in Europe pride ourselves on having a healthy attitude to naked flesh. It is not a criminal offence for women to have nipples nor is it unknown for men to have hairy legs. So what has gone wrong in Croatia, a nation previously known for its tolerant attitude to untidy pubic hair, crooked willies and saggy boobs. Laws requiring elderly Germans and Swedes to cover up may have won popular acclaim but when those rules are extended to Beyonce Knowles lookalikes that is just bureaucratic intransigence at work. So what gives?

Well the announcement of the proposed laws to the travel industry attracted media attention all around Europe and now the Croatian bureaucrats are playing that other favourite game of bureaucrats, blame shifting.

Tourist minister Dragan Primorac, cowering under a barrage of ridicule said that none of the proposals were his idea and that he was not a control freak. Mr Primorac blamed his staff who he said used a facsimile of his signature to give authority to the proposals. So far no ministry workers have admitted to being closet foot sniffers.

Dubrovnik - jewel of the Dalmatian Coast

Foot Sniffing holidays in Croatia

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One Million Year Old Footprints Left By First Holiday Makers In Norfolk

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Prosecuting One's Suit

Image source

Prosecuting one's suit or pressing one's suit. How archaic these phrases now seem in describing the process of courting a lady's favour. How quaint the word courting itself seems. So why do I not just talk about "copping off?" Well…
A flyer circulating in London's legal district advertises a special speed dating event for lawyers looking for love. Call me an old cynic if you like but "lawyer" and "love" are not words I can easily associate. Surely people whose entire life is spent examining evidence in forensic detail in the hope of closing loopholes, tying up loose ends, eliminating ambiguity and negotiating compromises can have little room in their souls for anything so indefinable, so unpredictable, so illogical as love? And speed dating?
Anybody who has had the experience of dealing with legal matters will know that "lawyer" and "speed" do not belong in the same sentence, or even the same article. (unless the article refers to the case of a lawyer being disbarred for substance abuse.) Layers are people to whom "due diligence" means sitting on their arse doing nothing for long periods while us poor punters pay them by the hour. When dealing with lawyers things happen "in the fullness of time" rather than now or PDQ.
All things considered then, both de fact and de juris, I must conclude that the entrepreneur who has invested his hard - earned in this venture has behaved in a reckless and foolhardy, but not criminal manner.
What little I know of speed - dating is that people have three minutes in each other's company after which they must decide if they are up for a casual shag with the person opposite. The idea of a lawyer doing anything in three minutes stretches the credulity of even the most credulous. It would take the speediest lawyer two and a half minutes to shuffle their papers and clear their throat before saying "My Lord, Members of the Jury…" The whole mystique of the legal profession is built on longwindedness, their speeches are full of notwithstandings and heretofores and are peppered with Latin phrases ordinary mortals cannot understand, pro bono ego. Lawyers are not equipped to formulate or respond to questions like :
"Veal or Pasta?"
"Nissan or Jaguar?"
"J-lo or Mariah?"
"Missionary or Spoons?"
but are more likely to begin "bearing in mind that you are still under oath could you tell me, in your own words and without regard to anything you may have read in the press, would Chinese or Italian be preferable for a first dinner date?" and jump on the response like so "You say Chinese, but if you cast your mind back to your divorce, did you or did you not claim that your partner's obsession with Thai food, which I think you will agree is similar to Chinese, had bored the pants off you?"
Assuming some kind of date is eventually agreed, that would only be the start of the trouble. Imagine negotiating a pre-date contract.
"It shall be understood by both parties that the party of the first part will, on the first date, pay for dinner in full, including wine and tips without prejudice to the party of the second part's right to withhold the reciprocal sexual favours should the party of the second part deem the party of the first part to be minging, unhygienic or in any way pervy."
The party of the first part will then be advised that should the party of the second part exercise the withholding of sexual favours clause pending further perusal of the party of the first part's social and sexual acceptability the party of the first part must have the right to demand that the bill be split down the middle.
Such a love affair would be certain to end in tears of course. Or lawsuits.