Legal

I got into an argument tonight with a barrister, who openly said she didn't know the difference between the meanings of the words "disinterested" and "uninterested". Her husband, a lecturer, was saying that there are different registers of English and that usage changes all the time. I said that that represents the neutral view of most linguists, who in my experience avoid normative statements like the plague. But anyway, I continued, that's one thing, but if we lose the distinction between these two words we lose a nuance in English for ever.

I was appalled that someone who works with language all the time, with the lives of others indirectly in her hands, should not be aware of the distinction between the two words. I felt a blood-rush of a base irritation but thank fuck, especially in the light of The Great Finance Seminar Disaster of 2013, I managed to control myself. She was actually very interesting and me and her and someone else who works for the Crown Prosecution Service got into an thankfully uncombative talk about their experiences in the courts.

The occasion was Neil's 60th birthday party. Neil's gay and I was aware that we were ignoring the very young gay actor-ish men to my right, but I couldn't think of much to say to them. Neil was really fucking rude to Trina a few months ago and he still doesn't understand why I cooled towards him afterwards.

I sat myself next to another woman who enthused about a Chagall exhibition she'd been to. I looked at her skirt, an artificial fabric draped over her thighs, its hem waving and uneven because the skirt's flimsy material was weaker than the yarn with which it was sewn.

Someone I knew died recently. He was fine a couple of weeks ago but a very aggressive form of leukaemia got him. He discharged himself from hospital and died in his house. I enjoyed his company but wasn't that close to him. He was a sociable man who played his cards quite close to his chest, never really letting you in.

His wake was in the local bikers' pub. Someone I've known since the girls were little was there, in a lovely tight green textured skirt that stopped just above her knees, chatting to her boyfriend who acquired a conviction for possession of a Class A drug as he was writing, and I was rewriting, his dissertation. You have to try hard to get done for drugs in England nowadays, but Kev managed it, swaggering drunkenly down the street smoking a spliff whilst carrying some amphetamine in his pocket. I can hardly criticise drug usage, but there should be an offence of Conduct Unbecoming A Gentleman. As a result, his so-called University--it's actually an arriviste HE college that offers courses in Praying and Advanced Washing Machine Use--is prissily witholding his professional certification.

I turned round to see another friend, who started talking about hifi, a subject that interests me too, but not as much as the sight of Tightly-skirted Woman, who was now standing with her arse back to me. Hifi Man is the most sexless man I know, which meant I could talk about amplifiers and stare at her arse at the same time. I imagined drawing my fingers very slowly along the side of her skirt from her waist downwards, before moving them laterally along the skirt's hem, slowing down still further when my fingertips brushed against her legs. "Well, I'm not sure I've ever seen any empirical evidence that all-copper cables have any appreciable effect on the sound." Very gently, I start pushing her skirt up. She puts her hands on the bar and arcs herself towards me. I gather her beautiful hair onto her neck and kiss her as I tell her that I'm going to push my cock into her cunt. "That's the thing, there's only a finite amount of those valves in the world. Every time they break... reduces it."