Some of my best friends are lawyers. That is an old habit I picked up when I was younger and it is tough to break.
You know what they say: everyone hates lawyers until they need one. So I find it only fair to redress the balance and love some lawyers just in case I need one on the day I go bonkers when the jheri curl makes a comeback.
The latest applicant for a position on my list of lawyer friends is actually a wizard in thin disguise, who practises in the United Kingdom, and has the best LinkedIn profile ever, notwithstanding half the organisations and schools he lists have never heard of him. His anonymous application to the Very Special Friends list appeared in my inbox recently. I knew it was him because it was signed in invisible ink, and that's what wizards do, even when communicating with muggles and mortals.
His "government name" is Alan Blacker but if you hollered, he might never answer because he prefers to style himself as Lord Harley of Counsel, which is much more impressive than my own title-in-waiting of Lady Elsa of Counsel-at-Bush.
Not everyone appreciates his efforts at being important, and a judge in the Cardiff Crown Court in Wales gave him a dressing down for dressing up in medals and badges and ribbons during a trial (which he lost, by the way).
Peering down from a great height of ridicule piled on top of scorn, the judge asked him, "What are these ribbons on your gown, please?" Lord Rumpelstiltskin replied that they were service medals for voluntary medical service and he had been an officer in the St John's Ambulance Brigade and in the Emergency Response Service. And the badge was that of his "regimental association."
Judge Morgan had never seen a barrister or solicitor appear in the courts with badges sewn into his gown. He referred to Sir Tasker Watkins, a barrister of South Wales, who later became a distinguished judge, who received during the Battle of Normandy the highest honour for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. He never decorated his gown, and would have regarded it "as the height of vulgarity" for such a thing to be done.
The judge then delivered the ultimate rebuke: "If you want to come into court looking like something out of Harry Potter, you can forget coming into this court ever again."
Dr The Rt Hon The Lord Harley of Counsel of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem ("no such person as Mr Blacker," he is wont to say, insisting on multiple handles to his name) tried to protest but the judge swept off and left him standing there in his horsehair wig which, I have to admit, is a wonderful stage prop, especially when perched atop such a pugnacious brow and backed up by Hagrid-worthy long black locks.
Lord Potter remarked that he was deeply hurt by the judge's comments and his title was an old Irish peerage which he had inherited from his father. Still, nobody, including the editor of the society bible Debrett's could find his earldom recorded anywhere.
Not wanting to seem rude, I figured I should at least try to place a call to Lord Nobody of Neverland about his pending application. No point heating up the Nimbus 2000 flying broomstick which was being used in a fierce quidditch match, anyway. So I borrowed the Bat Phone but he was having his tea and could not be disturbed.
My friends in the news media Over There were also having a difficult time getting through to him. Dear Sirs and Mesdames," he wrote to Legal Cheek. "His Lordship makes no comments to the gutter press."
He will be talking to somebody soon, even if he persists in referring to himself in the third person. Because St John in Wales has called the police, reporting that he does not belong to the Order of St John. And a Solicitors Disciplinary panel is gathering like a murder of crows.
The Wizard of Crown Court, no doubt, will be defending himself in any hearing, and he might even be able to heal himself. His now deleted LinkedIn profile included "Consultant Transactional Analysis Clinical Psychoanalytical Psychologist.''
If all else fails, he is even a qualified bus driver, and could certainly find employment on the new Hogwarts Express at Disneyworld, Orlando.
Her Ladyship may be reached wrenchelsa@hotmail.com between the hours of now and who cares.