All Comments on '1969 - Ch. 01'

Sylvia, this is your best effort yet! I'm right there in the courtroom, trying to look up Pauline's skirt as she sits with her lawyer watching the men testify about her sexual antics with them. Brilliant. I can't wait for Chapter 2! 5*

No doubt! And another masterpiece in the making. I love your stories, they inspire me. xxx Michele

You're spinning a terrific yarn. More!

Nice start, but as a lawyer myself, let me make a few corrections.

1) It is only a magistrate who is sometimes addressed as Your Worship. A circuit judge is addressed as Your Honour and judges of the High Court or Supreme Court (which was the Court of Appeals before 2005) are addressed as My Lord.

And magistrates sit in a bench of 3. So since this judge in your story is a single judge, he cannot be a magistrate. And since this is a trial, he could only be a circuit court judge or one sitting in Old Bailey. In either case he should be addressed as Your Honour or My Lord.

2) In the first page of your story, Mr. Spratt objects to Mr. Harrington-Brown's style of questioning Mr. Sibley, saying, "That is leading the witness." Now, Sibley is obviously HB's witness. So he has every right to lead him. Had Sibley been Spratt's witness, then HB could only cross-examine him, not lead.

3) I don't think any judge would have allowed the amount of vulgar words bandied about by HB and his witnesses in the open court.

Other than these obvious errors (obvious to a lawyer's eyes maybe), the story is quite interesting and seems to be uncovering a very erotic tale. Keep it up.

Oh yes, and my 19 year old girlfriend's name in July 1969 was Pauline,!We watched the moon landing together,but by the end of the summer she left me for a big black bouncer.