It is fair to say that my last CVP hearing could have gone...better. For the uninitiated, CVP is the system which enables barristers to attend Court hearings remotely.

You log on, and your face appears on the screens in the courtroom. These screens are pretty big, as their normal job is showing CCTV etc. to juries.

Earlier this week I went to do a trial at one of the remaining Nightingale Courts.

It was genuinely shocking. My case had no defence barrister.

The one originally instructed was in a trial somewhere else and no replacement could be found.

I regret to say that I must try everyone's patience by getting back on a regular hobby horse: the catastrophe that is PCDA.

https://twitter.com/acatfromgreece/status/1554574265948999681

For the uninitiated, PCDA is the terrible result of a terrible idea: that anyone joining the police needs to have a degree already, or acquire one during their probationary period (first two years of service).

As I limber up for nights, join me on my Journey of Metaphors into the police station. We enter through the pedestrian gate, with the lock that doesn’t always work.

It’s next to the broken vehicle gate, which sometimes won’t close meaning that someone has to be posted there to secure the nick.

Better than being unable to open, I guess.

‘Three o’clock is always too late or too early’

John Paul Sartre, there, musing on the Duality of Lates.

Anyway, here we go… Oh, the division is ‘just on minimum staffing’.

Super.

And that’s only because I happen to be in.

Not super.

Everything is appalling, so here are some stories about the Navy's Coastal Forces (Motor Gun Boats and Motor Torpedo Boats) in WW2. These small vessels had very powerful engines which were complex and hard to maintain.

As a result, base engineering staff sometimes had to remain on board to continue their work during operations.

10 December 1941 was one of the blackest days in the history of the Royal Navy.

Through a combination of strategic miscalculations and tactical errors, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya. 840 officers and men lost their lives.

Many of them showed astonishing bravery during the ships' final battle.

It could, as ever, be worse. You could be Thomas Greener. Aww, what a heartwarming... Christ.

Today is #999Day
So where else would I be
But on the county’s meanest streets,
Policing them for free. You’ve had Louis Macneice, Shakespeare, Tennyson and now some doggerel I made up on the way in. Spoiled you are. Spoiled.

Next time you make a mistake at work, comfort yourself that you are not the commanding officer of the USS William D Porter, a Fletcher Class US Navy destroyer commissioned in 1943. On 12 November 1943 this singularly unfortunate ship set off from Norfolk, Virginia on an important mission.

She was to join the escort of USS Iowa, which was conveying President Roosevelt, General Marshall other senior American war leaders to conferences in Cairo and Tehran.

Here we go again.

Most of early turn are still out, and those that are back at the nick look absolutely hollow eyed. It’s been non stop since 0700, apparently.

Yesterday there was a fatal fire, two GBHs, and a suicide.

Let’s see if today lives up to that. As well as all that, three of my team went onto live railway tracks to rescue a woman who’d jumped off a bridge.

It won’t be on the news, because it’s what they and thousands of other officers do every single day.

Few actions of the Second World War combine selfless heroism and wrenching tragedy so poignantly as the loss of HMS Glorious, HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent on 8 June 1940. The disastrous Norway campaign was over.

Vulnerable British convoys, escorted by those few ships the navy could spare, carried the evacuated troops homewards.

At the outbreak of World War 2, the anti submarine capabilities of the RAF were little short of pitiful.

Tiger Moth biplanes were sent to scour the seas for surfaced U Boats.

The procedure to be adopted if they found one might have come from Blackadder. First, they could engage the target with bombs. So far so good.

However, they were 20lb bombs which would, at the very peak of optimism (and accuracy), force the enemy to carry out some light redecorating.

Prominent in any list of dangerous military incompetents must come the name of Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee.

He was conceited, overbearing and utterly contemptuous of everyone's views except his own. This wouldn't have mattered so much if his views had been sensible. They were not.

I've just taken part in my second ever telephone hearing. I'm sure posh civil barristers have these all the time, but they're pretty new in criminal cases.

It was HILARIOUS. Six counsel were dialling in. First, we identified ourselves:

Clerk: 'Who is defending X?'

Counsel: 'I am [gives surname]'

Clerk: 'Your first name?'

Counsel: [inaudible]

Clerk: 'Benjamin?'

Counsel: 'No [inaudible]'

Clerk: 'Terrapin!?'

Counsel: 'KATHERINE!'

I am currently prosecuting a case with 20 defendants, split into 3 trials.

I have been / will be preparing or conducting these trials between January and June.

I haven’t been able to do any other work: this case has taken up all of my time.

Sentencing will be in mid July. The normal rule is that we get paid once the case has concluded: i.e. after sentence.

That’s fine most of the time. For this case, however, it’s disastrous. It means I will have no income for the first eight months of this year.