John Gibson: Nothing was barred on their big night

Published on Tuesday 16 June 2009 09:11

AS long as they had a good time. The Balmoral was crawling with the legal profession the other evening. Dinner and dancing for the Edinburgh Bar Association. A misnomer. An association of solicitors, rather than barristers.

Loadsa likely lads (long time since they'd been "lads", some of them) and their ladies. People-watching as a pastime, I recommend. Beats checking out the trenches in Princes Street and its environs, to see how deep the trams have dug, those hordes of chaps in hardhats singing "see you later excavator".

About that sartorially suspect solicitors' soiree, while the profession is deemed expert at telling us it expects our cheque will be in the post pronto, too many of them are clueless about how to wear the kilt, and their preening, self-obsessed women seemed a mite short on deportment and dress sense.

To observe so many of them clump through the Balmoral's Palm Court to the front door in Princes Street for a fag was an entertainment in itself. Lowered the tone, though.

Taleban 'n' trams

You may have noticed. There's a lot of James Nesbitt about. Given the chance, he'd sort out the Taleban single-handed. Indeed, was that not James hard-hatted and labouring on our scamways in York Place yesterday?

What's that got to do with the price of a pizza in Saigon, you're asking? Nowt, only that my man in Vietnam assures me there are no traffic jams, no malfunctioning lights there due to scamworks, the likes of which we have in Edinburgh.

Let me add that you've never been on a tram till you've been on one of Lisbon's, I can verify.

And Edinburgh's a midden compared to Lisbon. Unlike Lisbon, bus passengers here don't know where or when to get on or off because they are tramatised.

Afterwords . .

. . . I grieve for Peter Falk. I whiled away many an hour with his magnetic Lieutenant Columbo TV role. Alas, Peter at 81 has advanced Alzheimer's. Court wrangling has left him under his wife's guardianship. If she can see her way to send me one of Peter's old raincoats . . . By the way, what do you call two raincoats in a cemetery? Macs by graves.