Black & Purple & Swollen

It's strange how one event can change a week so much. I left college on Monday after my first session of property law and was delighted to discover that it was not as completely unfathomable as land law. Property law appears to be a sensible list of do's and don'ts that should be performed in a set order to buy a property. Like many of the CofL courses it's heavily based on a practical example.
During the course of the workshops we'll;

• question the client to see what they want
• make the preliminary searches to see if they're buying above a coal mine or on an ancient site of druidic sacrifice and,
• eventually draft the documents needed to complete the transaction. At every stage the college will provide accurate facsimiles of the paperwork we would need.

All in all, this looks a good course and should give me plenty to get my teeth into. It's going to be hard and we have a ton of work to do-but that seems par for the course now. As I've stated before, the College reckons that we should be doing 40 hours a week-realistically I am now doing 6 1/2 hours a day on each of my workshops days as well as about 8-10 hours on each of my two home days. I tried to withstand working on my 'day off' but have already spent a couple of hours staring at my laptop and floundering in confusion. If I get the urge then I'll do another hour or so later so that I can prepped for Tuesdays accounts session. (I might not get the urge-my mood can best be described as 'flakey' today)

Anyhow, having had a good class I started off on the long walk home-maybe I was day dreaming (that is soooooooo possible), maybe the ground was uneven but the end result was my right foot gave way and I turned over my ankle. I ended up on the ground in a untidy mess. A nearby fresh faced student asked if I was alright. The tone of her voice seemed to be begging to add the word 'grandad?' onto the question. This week saw the influx of a few hundred more students-these are the GDL guys who have studied for a different degree but are now getting a 1 year crash course in law to prepare them for a future career.
I don't think that she recognised me as being the coolest 42 year old on the planet (Brad Pitt excluded) but instead as a sad, middle aged chubber with a sense of balance problem...

Being all man and able to shrug off such petty woes I said, 'no worries' and walked off, teeth gritted. Once out of her sight, I resorted to type-I started limping and had a good whine to myself. Even at this stage, a tentative touch of my ankle indicated that it was swelling up faster than a 14 year old boy with a lingerie catalogue.

I hobbled back home and inspected the damage. My right foot was twice the size of my left. Hmm. Of all my silly worries before I started the course, getting an injury was probably the biggest. I have a 4 mile round trip to accomplish every college day. There is a bus service nearby but its not that nearby-I'd still have to walk about 1/2 a mile to reach the nearest stop. I tried to keep my weight off the ankle and hoped for the best. What makes this so ridiculous is that this is the third time that I've turned my right ankle over since term has begun. Once on the way there and twice in an almost identical spot on campus. I lived for 24 years in Exeter and never did it once!

A cursory and tentative examination the next day showed that things had not got any worse (or better, unfortunately) so I found a pair of shoes that I could fit into and headed off to accounts.

The classes attitude to this subject varies from 'wahay accounts' to 'waaaaaaaaaarrrgh accounts'.
I've got no major concerns with it. It's a hard course (but then they all are to me)-the only drag is that it will be a closed note exam. We don't have many but this could be the worst. I was in a hurry to limp off since I was due to do my first pro bono project that night-acting as a volunteer at a Citizens Advice law centre-but as I was heading to the door, one of my classmates asked me what preparation I had done for the next lecture.

Next lecture? What next lecture?

Nervous cough...what's that? It turn out that we have some extra large scale lectures booked for Tuesday afternoons. Ooops, now I have a dilemma. Do I stay for the lecture and miss the pro bono or go to the pro bono and miss the lecture? No contest really, I found someone to let me photocopy their notes and headed away. I'd rather get a reputation with the College for missing a lecture than failing to keep an appointment with an outside body.

I just about made it to the CAB in time and eagerly awaited my tasks. And waited and waited. The College had allocated two other students for that evening but only one other showed. We sat in an interview room and chatted. No, she hadn't heard about any afternoon lecture either.

(thinks**I really must read my timetable properly one day**)

After having waited for about 30 minutes the CAB began to come alive. Various solicitors (and one barrister) showed up and took rooms. We sat in with them and were on hand to do any of the tedious jobs that would be beneath them. It was interesting to see how the theory that we had been taught and the practise varied so much. I had the privilege to sit in with 3 of them and hear people with varied problems such as employment, divorce and probate (wills). The evening passed very quickly and soon I was on the street outside.

Well, what now?
Do I go home and watch tv or read a book?
Then it struck me, aha!
There was a party organised tonight for all the CofL students at a nearby nightclub!

Having enjoyed last weeks social activity so much it seemed only natural for me to find my classmates in town, have a swift half and then go to the club. Now one thing that I positively wouldn't do would be dance, I do love to dance but realistically with a sprained ankle that's not the smartest thing in the world.

Anyhow, I left the club at close to 1 AM, having bopped like a lunatic on the dance floor for 1 1/2 hours. It may have been my imagination but I'm sure that I heard a female voice say,'wow, not bad for an overweight middle-aged white guy with no sense of balance'-but then I had had a few swift halves by then...

Next morning. I awoke to find an alien object in my bed. It seemed about 4 feet long and a dull purple colour.

I tentatively touched it.
Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!
It was my foot!

In the cold light of day I examined it more closely. The colour was mostly purple with some worrying black bits. It appeared that someone had found a valve in my foot and had inserted a pump (foot pump?) and over inflated it. There was no way I was ever going to get a shoe on that! Fortunately I was due to study at home that day-nevertheless still a bit awkward to have to hop all day...

I hobbled in to college Thursday and got a little respect from my classmates-not for my work, heaven forbid, but my partying skills. I might not be able to pass on much to my young charges but if I can teach them to move in time to the beat then my work'll be done.
Talking of work, I'm really proud to be mixing with such a great bunch of guys. I have no idea whether we are considered an able group or not but if we are not then the really good ones must be amazing. 5 years in the OU has given me rather an inflated sense of my own ability. I must be working close to 50 hours a week just to keep up (and failing) but I will not quit on this-even if I have to go up to 60 hours a week (well maybe not quite that much...)

Anyhow, Thursday is civil litigation day-not much to report, same as last week except the written task for the afternoon was probably not as hard as the one for the previous week (go figure)

Friday is business law again-another good session. But what's this? Our first group assignment. As a table of 5 we will have to prepare work and comment on the work of other tables. This is set to be done over a period of 3 weeks with us meeting up on-line to discuss matters. Now where in my 50+ hours a week am I going to find time to prepare for this?

On top of this we had been given a written assignment last week-preparing a letter to a client.

I've already spent 4 hours of my life staring at this but it still looks like something that an finite number of monkeys cobbled up on a wet Sunday.

Oh, BTW, my foot is far less swollen and a lot more the pasty dead skin colour that it usually is, thanks for asking.