Of facial skin problems and impulsive wardrobe selection has left me, this morning, with a full beard, purple shirt and black tie.

I look like a werewolf undertaker.

There’s a standing joke, that those who know how to treat injuries are the worst patients. We burn ourselves on the stove and we know we *should* run it under a cold tap for 10 minutes, but that’s such a long time and I have dinner to cook, so a quick dab will do.

Yes, I know I’m bleeding, but it’s really no big deal, I’ll just give it a wee wipe with some tissue. What’s that you say? There looks to be grime in the cut? Or maybe some of that mould from the old bread I just threw out? Dach! I’ll shower tomorrow.

Cycling into work this morning, my ever-so-cool-effort-reducing-slick-tyres discovered the joys of freshly iced tarmac. This isn’t tarmac with chips in, just a smooth, glasslike piece of black, running across the road where two bits of surface are seamed together. I’m stomping up the hill fast, enjoying the sting in my sinuses from breathing in the cold hard morning air, eating up the headache, when my rear wheel squirrels away from under me. It didn’t skid, or slide, just leapt sideways a couple of feet, dumping me like a drunken date into the gutter and rush-hour traffic.

I’ve got better at this falling off thing, last time I came off my bike was because I rear-ended a car stopped in my lane (yes, yes, I know) and that scared the living shit out of me. I went home, stripped off, wiped tissue over the bits that were bleeding (and there were a lot of them), marvelled at the massive bruises on my hips and arse, climbed into a bath and wept. The next morning saw me in A&E with a wrist that wouldn’t move and a fist that couldn’t clench.

But today wasn’t like that, I went down, stayed down for a second as I wriggled the bits that had hit the deck (right calf, knee and hand), concluded that nothing was obviously damaged and wheeled myself to the kerb. The nice bloke in the van behind (who considerately didn’t drive over my head) stopped to check I was ok and I got back on my way.

All this after last night, when I managed to pour a scalding cup of tea over my crotch. There are times for discretion and privacy, but when your jeans and shorts are soaked in boiling hot tea which is continuing to scald your genitals, there is little space to be coy.

Thankfully, I was in the company of two of my oldest friends, so thought nothing of leaping up and stripping in the living room (while shouting a number of choice words). Friends as they are, they mercilessly razzed as I shuffled to my room to change. As I walked into the hall Fran shouted “Nice arse, for a fat bloke!”

Bastards.

I have, it should be said, a most unusual working space. Custom designed just for us, it houses the materials that under-pin every top level legal decision made in Scotland. The creme de la creme of Scotland’s legal minds study here, winkling out the most obscure, nit-picky points of Judicial minuteia, returning to their fat, over stuffed court chairs to deliver judgements.

The department is split over 2 and a half levels. Ground and 1st have ample seating and high ceilings, while between them snuggles a womb-like mezzanine, shelves running from the floor to the 7 foot ceilings. An enclosed corridor of nit-picking, it spreads its shelves open wide like a spiv in a 1930’s movie, splaying his coat fronts; “I got it all baby, Human Rights, Road Traffic Law, Criminal Procedure, step right up”. Accessible by a spiral staircase built into one of the cabinets on the ground floor, its a secretive place, without desks or chairs you’d think it would be unwelcoming, but many a customer is found leaning on lecterns or sitting on the floor, flicking through reports of cases from all over the country.

The whole area is finished in cherry wood and beige leather, deeply warm and inviting. The wood’s shades shimmer as you walk past them, darkening as the sun shines through the windows, specifically chosen for their habit of changing tone through age. This is architecture built to last.

Great beams of wood run across parts of the ceiling, pricked with tiny sparkling halogen lights. Each desk has a light, subtly illuminating its soft leather work surface.

Top shelves have long strip lights, their bland shine highlighting, but not dazzling off the sheen of polished leather book bindings.

Our cabinets, woodwork et al have won awards; photographers visit to take large-format shots for glossy brochures, simulataenously admiring the design, while bitching and kvetching about the different light temperatures.

Thick, deep, royal purple carpet covers the floor in places, while pale-stained wood runs alongside the bottom of the shelves. Built into an original building, the interior design melds well with the exterior: stiff, grey granite pillars. Outside, looking in, our space is warm and cozy, filled with gently lit alcoves and comfy benches inviting you just to sit, flick through this morning’s Scotsman, listen to a little Bach.

Conversely, we sit in our haven, looking out onto Parliament Square. Tarmac, those granite pillars, standing to attention, ever looming. The Square is rarely sunny, shaded on all sides by high buildings. A statue of King Charles on horseback sits in the middle. Cast in lead, he makes an impressive figure and looks even better with a sprinkling of snow.

To the south, east and west Parliament House extends its arms, inviting all to take a shot at representing themselves. Here, everyone is equal, everyone gets a bite at the apple, and hopefully, if the apple turns out not to be the one that *you* stole from the tree, you’ll get to go home again, walking triumphantly out of this dark square, tucked away behind the cathedral.

And there’s a joke, if ever there was one. On one side of the square, the very image of justice and even-handedness, on the other a vast, gothic behemoth, squat with its own self-righteousness, bloating at the seams with talk of fire and brimstone, of eternal damnation or celestial salvation for those prepared to toe the party line.

You can enter the door of either building and it’s anybody’s guess what your fate will be when you come out the other end. Jail? Hell? Heaven? Acquittal? Maybe you’ll see your loved ones buried, or the final nail in the coffin of that messy divorce hammered home. Perhaps you’ll spend tonight wrapped round each other, blessed with holy matrimony, or will you spend it on a narrow cot in the Bar-L, shivering and terrified, knowing that the voices screaming outside your cell won’t shut up until your parole in seven.

None of this, however, has anything really to do with the point of today’s post. For while my working space sparkles and spangles, invites and welcomes, there is no escaping the fact that it’s built into a stone wing of an old building, with massive single-glazed windows and no central heating. The department is freezing, the customers complain, I shiver at my desk with a fan heater blowing on my feet. It does little to warm me, I’m yet to change out of the jeans and boots I arrived in. I’ll spend the majority of today sat at my desk; while my appearance is hardly appropriate for attending court, I’ll play the newsreader card, nobody sees me from the waist down. The concept of sitting here in my light wool suit with dress shoes is significantly less attractive than being clad in thick denim and ankle-high boots, lined with Thinsulate fleece.

I give up, throw in the towel and pick my fan-heater up, appearances be damned. Sitting it on my desk I crank it up as far as it will go and aim it full at my chest, a cup of hot coffee later and I feel something give. The slab of muscle that lies over my sternum (which physiologically I know can’t tighten to make me feel cold, but physically has done so) relaxes.

Life is good.

Staircase of Satan!

Pond of DEATH.

Papercuts hurt. But not as badly as cardboard cuts. I have a cardboard cut on the inside of my left wrist, which i think means I’m about to exsanguinate through my radial artery in a really fucking nippy way.

That made me laugh my arse off.

And I shall share.

And it’s allegedly true, though it was a friend of a friend who told me that she’d asked someone who was there, so, eh, you know. Either way, it’s funny as hell.

So there’s a big car crash, right? 4 young guys, front passengers are doing ok, rear passengers more seriously injured. Firefighters arrive on scene before ambulance and await their arrival.

While waiting for the ambulance, one firefighter checks out the rear passengers and one of them is significantly worse off than the other. Major trauma to the side of his head, massive soft tissue injuries on his temple and face, blood pouring down his cheek and neck, rapidly diminishing level of conciousness.

Smart guy, this firefighter, he grabs a bandage and whacks a dressing onto the injuries, stemming the bleeding.

Ambulances arrive, treat patients, paramedic removes bandages from rear passenger and finds, no, not soft tissue injuries and blood, but shredded meat and chilli sauce.

Poor bugger had been eating a kebab at the time of the accident and had been lying face-down in the mess when Trumpton turned up!

Nothing like having your dinner strapped to the side of your head to put the cherry on the evening’s proceedings, eh?

Some quasi-new-age-earth-goddess “run with the bear, fly with the eagle” resin-cast wank!

Dear lordy lordy monkey moo, you should continue to scan through that site, it’s fabulous.

Also don’t miss the imp fellating your office supplies.

But my favourite has to be the image on the front page. Who would have thought that Santa could manage to convey so many emotions all in one still shot? His body language appears to be saying “Why yes, I am a camp old man sneaking into houses to abduct this sleeping child”.

The man’s a legend!

One more thing. What kind of parents can afford to spend just shy of a hundred dollars on a “Sir Percival Illuminated Sculpture” but then make their kid sleep on the floor without pillows or blankets?! Someone needs to call the social!

From changing my name by deed poll to

Tinkerbell’s Enchanted Hooey.

(Safe for work, BTW)