Sawyer the Lawyer

Maria and I arrived at the pub about the same time. That isn’t the bad news. That comes later. I asked her what she’d like to drink. Just a slimline tonic, please. I got her one and a pint of Stella for myself and we sat and chatted about our day. She’s working in the men’s geriatric ward at the moment, they swap them around (the nurses, not the geriatrics). She told me that geriatrics are the worst patients she has to nurse, but she didn’t tell me why. Because they try to feel her up I suppose. I don’t blame them, I’d be doing the same thing myself later with a bit of luck.

Her duties seem to be mostly fetching and carrying for the geriatrics and feeding them their pills; no mention of bedpans but I bet she sees plenty of them, as well as pee bottles, if my experience of old people is anything to go by. Then it was my turn. I fed her some bullshit about heading a successful drugs bust this afternoon. I made it sound really exciting. I’m good at bullshitting, you need to be if you’re a solicitor, half the job is talking and writing bullshit, heretofore, wheretofore, notwithstanding, and all that garbage.

She took forty minutes over her drink, so with slimline tonics at £1.50 a throw it was no contest compared to the pictures at £7 for a seat, plus chocolates and maybe a can, say twelve quid altogether, so I suggested we stayed put. She agreed and then asked if she could have a cocktail, she’d forgotten what they were called but she knew the ingredients, the barman at a club in Ibiza gave her the recipe when she was on holiday there last July, she and her friend Claire were on them all week. I get her one. It costs me a fiver. It lasted her ten minutes then she asked if she could have another one, it was lovely, almost as nice as the ones in Ibiza. I only just stopped myself asking her if the name of the cocktail might possibly be Prepare To Get Your Knickers Down If I’m Paying A Fiver A Time For These.

Less than an hour later she was on her third. She had five altogether. And that isn’t the bad news. After the fourth she told me she really fancied me but she never shags on the first date. I smiled and said that’s fine, I never try anything on the first date, and award myself ten Brownie points. And that isn’t the bad news either. The bad news is that on our next date – and there was always going to be a next date with a girl who by telling me that she didn’t shag on the first date had more or less promised that she did on the second and who I already had £26.50 invested in, not counting my Stella and three diet cokes – the bad news is that on our date she wants to go out with me in my police car when I’m on a case. It will be so exciting, she says. I don’t know about exciting, it’ll certainly be interesting.

Sawyer the Lawyer.


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Back to work today. I spent much of the day drawing up a contract between a retailer and a wholesaler of fish and fish products and planning for my date tonight with Maria. No prize for guessing which of the two I paid the most attention to.

Two things had to be decided. One, where to take Maria. Two, how to have sex with her after. Or, more accurately, where to have sex with her. This assumes that she’ll want to have sex with me, but as she’s a nurse there’s a better than average chance if past experience is anything to go by.

On a first date I usually arrange to meet the girl at a pub and we take it from there, and Maria was agreeable to this. What then usually happens is that we either stay put and get to know each other or just have the one drink and then go on to the pictures or maybe a club. I’m fine with either arrangement. I decided I’ll see what she’s drinking first, and how quick she drinks it. If it’s something cheap and she takes her time over it I’ll suggest we stay put, but if it’s expensive and she goes at it like a politician at a pig trough it’s the pictures.

The second decision I had to make, where to have sex with her, was more tricky. If I had a place of my own there wouldn’t be a problem, it would be ‘How about a nightcap at mine?’, but living with my parents there’s no chance of that as they’re very old-fashioned about that sort of thing. I should have my own place by now. I could afford this without too much hardship, but living at home I get all my washing and ironing done and I eat very well, apart from the fish and chips at the moment. It’s like living in a first class hotel but without the chance of sex. Ifield shares a flat with a mate and I get the use of that sometimes, but not tonight, his mate’s boracic and anyway he wants to watch the football.

I decided it will have to be the back seat of the car again. I drive a Mini Cooper, which hardly has a back seat and consequently is not ideal for sex, though by no means impossible; but unfortunately a Mini Cooper is the only car to drive if you’re a young solicitor about town, unless you can afford a German roadster, which I can’t manage at the moment. It is one of life’s great ironies that the Mini Cooper, one of the best cars in the world for pulling girls, is one of the worst for having sex in once you’ve pulled one. I suppose I could always tell her there’s something wrong with my Mini and I’ve had to borrow my parents Honda, which has a big enough back seat for a threesome and room for spectators if you’re that way inclined, but I’d have to get rid of all the smells after, then live with the fear of my mother finding a pair of knickers stuffed down the back seat or in the glove compartment, with all the hassle that would bring with it, so it just isn’t worth it.

“Daydreaming again young Blenkinsop,” said Ancient Mr Nesbitt, mistaking me for someone who left the practice three years ago. He said this all of a sudden, having crept up on me like he does. (It isn’t a ploy to catch people slacking, it’s because he’s so old all he can do is creep, and he can only just about manage that).

“Daydreaming? Mr Nesbitt,” I said, shocked. “Not at all. Just concentrating very hard on doing an excellent job on the Briggs/Bracegirdle fish contract.”

“Good to hear it, Ifield,” he said, and went on his way. Another satisfied customer.

Sawyer the Lawyer.


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“And what do you do for a living?” the girl asked.

“Me. Oh I’m a policeman. Plain clothes.”

Her face lit up. “Really? How interesting.”

Well I wasn’t about to tell her I’m a solicitor was I? Once bitten. Well quite a few times bitten actually, before the penny finally dropped, because meet someone at a party and tell them you’re a solicitor and whatever interest they’ve shown in you up to then evaporates quicker than piss in the Sahara; then their eyes glaze over and they start looking over your shoulder for somebody else to talk to. I suppose this is because solicitors are perceived as dull. Well let’s face it, by and large we are.

The only time I ever said I was a solicitor and the girl’s eyes didn’t glaze over was when it turned out that she was solicitor too. So I quickly told her that no, I was just kidding, really I was a social worker, which to my certain knowledge – I’ve been there – is at least as dull as a being a solicitor and quite possibly even duller. She must have thought so too because her eyes immediately glazed over and two minutes later she was off. (I’m not dull of course; I’m the exception that proves the rule. And Ifield, whose party I was at, isn’t dull either, far from it, as I’m sure you’ll find out if you keep reading this blog).

I don’t get invited to too many parties. Possibly because I’m a solicitor. Certainly not because of my appearance because I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I look like a taller, slimmer Tom Cruise. I could understand it if it was because I looked like a shorter, fatter Tom Cruise because the only party a shorter fatter Tom Cruise would be likely to get an invite to is one thrown by Snow White.

I think a much more likely reason is that by and large people who throw parties tend to invite people who invited them to their party, and I don’t have parties. I’d like to, but apart from them being expensive I live with my parents, so it’s obviously not an ideal situation. I did try a party a couple of years ago when I managed to pick up some only just out-of-date party snacks cheaply from Marks and Spencers but it was a disaster. My parents were supposed to be going out for the evening, a brass band concert or something, but it got cancelled. My dad went to the pub to be out of the way but my mother spent the whole evening tidying up and giving people dirty looks if they dropped their cigarette ash on the carpet, and at one time she’d have had the hoover out if I hadn’t spotted her and frog-marched her outside. Then my dad got back from the pub after only an hour, it was karaoke night and he wasn’t sitting there listening to that rubbish, but don’t mind him, we wouldn’t know he was here, he’d go up to his bedroom and watch the telly and you wouldn’t hear from him again. I heard from him two minutes later when he came down to ask if I’d turn the music down a bit, he couldn’t hear A Touch of Frost properly. Five minutes later I heard from him again, he still couldn’t hear Frost, could I turn the music down a bit more? The music was now so low that we could hear Frost but we couldn’t hear the music, which is all right if you like Frost but not if you want to party, which apparently all my guests did because five minutes later they’d all left.

The girl at the party was called Maria. Telling her I was a plain clothes policeman worked, because I pulled. We have a date next Tuesday.

Sawyer the Lawyer.

Visitors have been unable to comment on my posts in the past but happily it’s been sorted out and now they can. Feel free.


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Mother was back from Hartlepool in good time to try out the fish from the Indian chippy. I wish she’d have stopped in Hartlepool a day longer. If anything it was even worse than that from the Chinese chippy. Well they claimed it was a fish, it looked (and smelled) more like an onion bhaji to which they’d added a dollop of past its sell by date Whiskas. I said as much to Mother. Father said a starving African would be glad of it. Although he’d said exactly the same thing when I complained about the Chinese fish, and he’d said it many times before whenever I’d complained about food, I was going to let it go and put it down to his ignorance, then I remembered that the other day I’d seen a coloured family moving in a few doors down.
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A few minutes later I was round there. “Good morning, I’m your new neighbour, Terry Sawyer, from number 33”, I said to the man who answered the door. He was probably a West Indian rather than an African if the dreadlocks were anything to go by, but he was quite thin, if not starving, and needs must. “I wonder if you could do me a favour?”

I led him into the dining room where Mother and Father were by this time on their apple crumble. I’d told Bob Marley (I forgot to ask his name) that I wanted him to give me a lift shifting a wardrobe as there was a chance he wouldn’t have come if I’d told him the real reason. I led him over to the table. Mother and Father immediately got to their feet. I pointed accusingly at the Indian fish and said to Bob: “Would you eat that if you were starving?”

“Who is this gentleman, Terry? Aren’t you going to introduce us?” said Mother.

“All in good time, Mother.” I turned to Bob. “Well?”

He looked at it more closely. “What is it?”

“You might well ask. It purports to be a fried fish. Would you eat it?”

I stood back, arms folded, confident that his reply would be in the negative. He gingerly broke, or rather ripped, a corner off the fish, put it in his mouth and chewed on it. Then, rather than pulling a face and spitting it out, as I fully expected it, he swallowed it. Then he said: “Quite tasty. Yes, I’d eat it.”

Words failed me. Mother said: “You can finish it if you like, Mr…..If you haven’t already eaten. There’s apple crumble for afters.”

I don’t know whether he did eat it because I left there and then and went up to my room.

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