Thursday, February 4, 2010

A FINE BODY OF LAW

In a blast from the past, our post about the large number of souls in the NT fraternity brought a response from a gun journo who graced Darwin with his presence moons ago and had dealings with the small number of people in the legal profession in those days . In particular, he described a judge’s daughter as having a corpus delicieux, or maybe it was some other legal term, my recollection of schoolboy French being like English cooking , tres terrible

He commented that while judges often exuded the stern visage of somebody disappointed at not having had the opportunity to throw a black cap over their wig and order an execution, including quartering of the felon, their female associates and progeny were often more attractive to the eye.

During his time in America ,where there are more lawyers and ambulance chasers than fleas and cattle ticks on a blue heeler at each intersection, he mixed with starlets, the Sopranos , shonks and probably Hunter S. Thompson’s Samoan attorney.

Much to our surprise , our reporter friend lobbed in Darwin some years ago on a flight back to America with a distressed female in tow whom he had met on the plane. She was suffering from a mysterious malady,said to be a sodium deficiency . Was it also jet lag ? Too many in- flight gin slings? A pickled koala canapé long past its use by date? Perhaps a pill of some kind. ? In any case , here eyes were sticking out and she was unsteady on her feet. Nowadays, if you landed in Darwin in her state from overseas you would be welcomed by officials, taken into a room, stripped and told to bend over , such is our respect for visitors from OS.

Could we look after this troubled damsel until she landed on runway one ? Of course. She appeared to be over the age of consent, so there was no way that we could be charged under the US Mann Act 1910 for aiding and abetting the transport of a minor across a state boundary for immoral purposes. After a bit of R and R in our residence , she and our friend were up, up and away.

Incidently , the recent start of the NT legal year started with the usual religious service and numbers , oddly, were down. Former Chief Minister Paul “ Porky” Everingham , a lawyer, also lobbed in town to deliver a series of talks about the legal battles of years ago .