No cheques, no work, too poor to travel ... Junior Junior gets through January - preceded by a ghastly Christmas ... The myth of trying to be conspicuous during the break
Christmas ... the start of the worst time of the year at the bar.
I go into the end-of-year celebrations knowing that there will be no work and no money for the next month, at least.
Despite this I still spend too much money on Christmas presents for relatives I don't particularly like.
I sat down to a Coles-Woolworths manufactured, pre-packaged, northern hemisphere inspired Christmas lunch, drank too much and then fell into a food coma for the rest of the day.
Among many of the season's pointless traditions is the Christmas cracker.
Each year, I buy the most expensive ones I can find after the disappointment of the previous year.
It seems that every year less explosive stuff is being used in these items and what was once a satisfying "pop" is now a bit of a "poof".
If you are unlucky lucky enough to win, you get to (a) put on a tissue-paper crown with the joy of having to wear it for the duration of lunch; (b) you get to read out the same "Dad" joke you had last year; (c) you are then saddled with trying to look excited about the miniature sticky-tape dispenser you won.
I slept through the New Year's fireworks, because the idea of loading barges with millions of dollars, driving them to the middle of Sydney Harbour and setting the cash alight, didn't make me feel particularly celebratory.
Junior Junior suggests reallocation some of the fireworks funds to skint barristers
I couldn't help thinking that a distribution of some of that firecracker money to skint barristers, waiting for the cheque to come in, would have been a more worthwhile purpose.
Then January arrives and I am stuck at home because chambers has decided to do renovations.
I watch midday television, obsessively check emails for any sign of work and pray that over the break clients have not forgotten I exist.
There is an urban legend that if a junior junior makes himself or herself conspicuously obvious for the whole of the December-January period that there will be a miraculous urgent injunction.
All the more senior barristers will be away so the junior junior will have the opportunity to wake a judge, run a flawless injunction and save the day.
This urban legend keeps many a junior junior waiting expectantly for weeks on end.
There is always disappointment.
So, why is January at the bar like a Christmas cracker?
It is always approached with expectation and invariable there is more poof than pop.