I had returned to sydney from tassie to graduate from a degree i finished years earlier. I didnt think graduation would be a big deal but it was actually a lovely experience. My mum and I popped into the Monkey bar for champagne after and wound up chatting to a group of barristers about the usual stuff you talk  to barristers about - the cab rank rule, the psychological challenge of defending alleged rapists, the situation of being all that there is standing between the accused and the state. One particularly charismatic and erudite chap in his 50s heard I was studying law and took an interest. He liked that I was nubile, naive and fascinated. We all wound up going to dinner at Satasia. It sounds stupid but thats not uncommon in Blamain - to go for dinner with people you meet that night. Maybe an inner west thing?

When my mum was outside having a cigarette he gave me his card and suggested i join him as a 'legal researcher' as we travel the world first class for a couple of months. Yeah, cause I was so spanking hot at legal research. Whatever! "Dont tell you mum though" he said. I laughed. Lost the card but googled him a couple of days later wanting to send a thank you note for supper. It had been a fun night. And viola!

Hansard reports to the effect that he was a well known sexual predator, struck off in NSW for seducing 15 yearold girls in his office on work experience. I think back to my 15 yearold self, moopy, introverted, a streak in her hair, homework spread out across the floor. The dangerous barrister teaching legal studies at the convent? I was shocked, thousand times over but it actually made a bit of sense. The 15 yearold alleged victim he ran off to Qld with was still in his life. She was now the 23 yarolf in his stories and wanted to get married. His nickname for her was Picket Fences. He was planning to punish her forever for a moral transgression she had committed. It made my mum and I dislike him on some different level to charming conversation and engaging conversation.

She has not been so good, she melted this week and she is scared of the weekend, just a little. Hard to act out when you are in the presence of an angel. Hard to live as a sinner and not act out. Madame Shangrila is getting help btw. She has been really honest with Cornflakes and by all the great mysteries of the world he is still there, somehow. There is a tarot card which symbolises your best hopes and worst fears (#7??) and hers is that he is, like, actually an angel. She wants to immortalise him in print and make him happy in the tangible world. She does not want to be a statistic.

She is going to ask for time off and try and do a few weeks in a safe place. She knows it is brain chemistry, that she is not insane, that it is serotonin and dopamine and all that sh*t. It is better than being a bad statistic and a horrible warning. 

I want to see spring with clear eyes.