Running away from it all ...

And while you've got your hand in your pocket (and before the pay cut starts to hurt) a few of us from 4 Brick Court chambers are running in the British 10k on Sunday 5th July. Our chosen charity this year is the
Neurofibromatosis Association . Neurofibromatosis is one of our most common genetic disorders, affecting 1 in every 2,500 people worldwide including 25,000 in this country alone. It can affect any family, with no previous history of neurofibromatosis, through new gene mutation. As yet there is no cure.

We have a Just Giving page to make it easy for you to inundate us with financial encouragement.

Black & Blue?

As I stepped off the train at Waterloo tonight I was greeted by headlines suggesting that Black Monday was upon us once again as share prices took a huge tumble. I then read in various London papers that two weeks after D-Day comes Blue Monday, the day which some Psychiatrists and Psychologists say we all experience the biggest low of the year (for an account of the somewhat spurious science behind this designation see this Wikipedia page . Debts, despondency over resolutions we have already failed to keep and the dank and dismal weather all contribute to a general air of gloom (in fact it is the warmest January day since records began and any minute now I predict a global warming jag).

However, perhaps borrowing from the equally spurious science expounded in Rhonda Byrne's the Secret, apparently if you expected to be blue today you will be.

Mike Finnigan, of corporate and personal development company Advance Performance, which specialises in human behaviour, said: "If you think about January 21 as 'Blue Monday' then the part of the brain known as the reticular deactivating system will immediately begin to focus on things that arise during the day. Associating a day with something such as an increase in negative or even suicidal thoughts is a very dangerous thing to do. The danger is, if you think that something is going to be 'blue', then it will naturally lead you to act negatively."

Good job I only found out about this after a rather ordinary miserable Monday or I might have been even more downhearted! New Year's resolution to self: think only happy thoughts on Mondays (and don't get depressed when you forget to do so).

New Year's Resolutions

As is usual at the beginning of the year my thoughts turned to New Year’s resolutions. I was rather stuck for ideas for myself so I decided it would be much more fun to make a list of resolutions which I wished that other people would make. Firstly, of course, all UK family lawyers must resolve to read the Family Law Week website and blog on a daily basis. Secondly, it would be great if some more of you could resolve to contribute to the blog. And wouldn’t it be lovely if the Legal Services Commission could resolve to reacquaint itself with the fundamentals of economic reality? It would be also quite interesting if the new ministers at the Ministry of Justice could devise a policy or two relating to family law – any policy – even a Tory one? It would be good too if someone could resolve to clarify the relevant departmental and political responsibilities for matters to do with children but I am not sure who to pin this one on! Some appreciation of the work of family lawyers by the general public or at the very least the fourth estate would not go amiss either but I am trying to be realistic. And for myself? To resist the temptation to emigrate to sunny climes where the trees are full of kookaburras and koalas.