Busy busy busy and travel expenses

Suddenly, The Master is busy. We were in the Royal Courts of Justice again this morning for a committal case. This would have involved a half day hearing about whether a guy got sent down for contempt of court for breaching a non-molestation order. Would have, except it was adjourned.

Back at chambers, he has been given an eight day trial at the beginning of January by a local authority solicitor I watched him work very effectively with a few weeks ago. Apparently Mum and Dad (as all the lawyers in care cases refer to the parents) are both represented by QCs, which should be interesting. I'll be away for the start of it but will see the last few days. He also has some sort of mental health case tomorrow that he wants me to do some research on, but as he's just vanished somewhere it's a bit hard to get started.

He's been bouncing around the last couple of hours saying how much work there is to do, but I'm having difficulty extracting some solid work from him that I can get on with to assist. Once he calms down a bit I should be able to get a task list, but then I'm away for two weeks.

An interesting dilemma arose right at the start of the day. I emailed the chambers administrator bloke last week about what I should do about travel expenses to various courts. I bumped into him on the stairs this morning and asked him in person. It transpires that The Master is supposed to be paying my travel expenses personally. We did actually have a conversation about this some time ago when he said he wasn't going to pay for my travel costs, and I assumed at the time that this was because there is some sort of central chambers fund.

I'm not desperately keen to raise the subject again, I have to say. On the other hand, I've probably spent not far off £100 in the last few weeks on travel to various courts and my grant is £1000 a month.