My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "A Few Figs from Thistles", US poet (1892 - 1950)

Wednesday 6 August 2008

Praise Be to Happy Endings!

It's been an awfully long time. An awfully, incredibly, amazingly long time. And yet days and weeks and months have flown by in the blink of an eye. The whole of the BVC year has whizzed by and with it, a whirlwind of mini-pupillages, marshalling, pupillage applications and examinations flurrying by.

And so it came to pass that out of 21 applications made, Josephine received 10 outright rejections, a further 4 (interviews-been-held-already-Chambers-too- discourteous-or-disorganised-to-inform-applicant-of-rejection) rejections, attended 7 first round interviews, was given the boot by 3, invited back by four, given the most fierce of grillings by two, misled the court in one (oh woe, oh woe, oh woe was Josephine - she'd made a note! on the top of her brief! Not to do that very thing!) and when the Day of Judgment finally arrived...

was offered -to her greatest delight- 1 pupillage.

Praise be to happy endings! And to even happier beginnings...

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done!! Whereabouts?

Anonymous said...

Congratualtaions. I hope we are going to hear more from you, I enjoyed your blog last year.

Best of luck.

Anonymous said...

'congratualtaions' being a special barristerial form of felicitation (in case you are unfamiliar with the terminology).

SM said...

Well done. And, if the quality of the writing is anything to go on, well deserved. You will enjoy yourself.

Oh yes - post. I know people can be stuffy about it. But you could help a lot of other people by writing about pupillage...

Feel free to get in touch if I can help.

Josephine Bloggs said...

Whereabouts?! Whereabouts?! Such detail is top-secret, classified, strictly confidential, never-to-be-revealed! But it is a lovely set and I am thrilled to be joining them next Autumn :)

Thank you, Nin, that's kind. I'm afraid I lost interest and patience a little with the blog once the BVC got underway - I was totally devoid of inspiration and have found the time to have quite simply flown by. "Congratualtaions and cerebralrelations" sounds like the sort of song you'd sing after a glass of champagne too many!

Thank you Simon - the excitement still hasn't worn off, I can't wait for next September although this year is looking pretty exciting too (details of which would give things away entirely and probably get me sacked, suffice to say I'll not be so very far away from a rather large building on the Strand...). My Call ceremony was held a week or so before the pupillage announcements had been made, and I couldn't help musing that afternoon on whether that would be the one and only time in my life that I would wear a wig and gown. I am glad that it was, in the end, the first -I hope- of many.

I suspect you are probably right re. blogging about pupillage - I thoroughly enjoyed the musings of L2B and Pupilblogger last year and hope that I will have time to post now and then on the trials and tribulations of being a pupil. We shall see :)

The Vinthusiast said...

Josephine, I am late to the party, as ever, but very many congratulations! AD(L2B as was):-)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations - Missed your posting over the last year. Now you're back, do carry on...

Poppy said...

Well Done!!

And it is lovely to hear from you again 'round these parts!

LL

Anonymous said...

Frankly, I think its a bit cruel of you to go off for a whole year and then come back just to rub in the fact that you have pupillage.
I dont think I'd trust you in practice with a ten foot barge pole.

Josephine Bloggs said...

Fortunately I don't think I will be handling any barge poles (of any length) either in court or out, nor touching them as far as I can throw them... but thank you, Anonymous, for the amusing imagery conjured by the mixing of metaphors!

I am sorry that the ending to the story was not as you wished - it has been a very busy year and I suppose in choosing to devote my time to the task at hand I felt I didn't have the time or inspiration to maintain a blog of a content worth reading. However, I remember the tremendous and unbearable suspense I felt when Pupilblogger almost didn't tell us all the happy outcome of his pupillage endeavours and so for that reason I decided -for the few readers who may have been interested- to finish the story. My intention was not to please, merely to conclude.

I hope in due course to blog again. Unfortunately I am not really at liberty to blog about the way I am spending this year and were I to blog about the rest of my fairly normal, not terrifically exciting or out-of-the-ordinary personal life, I fear it would make for very tedious, self-indulgent and dull reading indeed. So that is that! All best :)

Anonymous said...

patronising too.
You'll make a perfect barrister.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your success! I sincerely hope you will be continuing despite having entered the ranks of 'the elite' as I've only just discovered you!

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