With absolutely no idea about the law of milk rounds I set about bullying the Board. As people are apt to go elsewhere pretty quickly for their pinta, instant action was necessary. My mention of a High Court Writ to the local manager ensured instant communication with the area office. My recollection is that by mid afternoon the matter had skirted the regional office and was in the hands of head office.
My threats had similarly advanced. I had made a list of all the different types of injunction I could glean from our outdated copy of the White Book.
As these were the days before faxes, all the menace that I could muster had to be down the telephone. I set them a deadline of 3pm to reinstate the milk round. As the hour hand swept round, I telephoned with news of the further interesting procedures I was about to initiate.
Fortunately my bluff was not called and they capitulated at 2.55. My bill for that activity (including the days of negotiation which followed) was £50 - and I don't believe I was ever paid.
Other skirmishes followed. Often the more trivial the subject matter the more interesting the combat. Thus I would spend days in a forensic challenge to the validity of a single pair of double yellow lines, battling over the custody of the matrimonial dog or adapting the Sale of Goods Act to apply to a parrot without tail feathers.
The office grew inexorably and with each bulging of the seams we moved on to a larger building experiencing in the process floods, fire but no pestilence.
And with the buildings came the people who have provided inspiration (or at least perspiration) for these pages:
My gin and tonic partner started as she intended to continue, taking her full quota of holiday, (unlike the rest of us who made a virtue out of confining our recreation to the occasional day off at the weekend) and never leaving after 5.15 except in case of extreme urgency. Elegant and always beautifully manicured she has always been the despair of us the workaholics because she seldom fails to meet her target and almost never shows the least sign of sweat on her brow. But then she wouldn't would she?
Nepotism is always alive and well. He was engaged to the daughter of my optician (who happened to be a client). What better introduction could you have to my bearded partner when he applied to us for a job?
My Jamaican partner, between singing snatches of "Island in the Sun", would regale us with accounts of bizarre and eccentric treatment by the men of Norfolk to their womenfolk. The more distasteful the behaviour the more she had to tell us how shocked she was about it all.
He was a student, had run into the back of a car and damaged his girlfriend. We sued him in a friendly sort of way on her behalf, and obtained for them both enough money to pay the deposit on a house, thereby launching him into the world of capitalism. Afterwards he came to spend a day at the office, and he never left. Successive buildings have become ankle deep in apple cores. Thus was born my vegetarian partner.
And came the other players, like those who have at some time or other been my secretary until they were wheeled away by men in white coats. My list of conquests is long and reads like a prospectus from a dating agency: Maureen, Stella, Jill, Karen, Samanda, Carol, Angela, Julie-Ann, Andrea and finally Betty (who, in the nicest possible way, will remain in the saddle until the end).

After the early idealistic years I settled down, bought a foreign car and kept mainly out of trouble, but I reckoned without Mrs Grey catching the ferry across the river Ouse and arriving one day damp and suffering from photosensitivity. Her complaint about Opren, unwittingly launched my career on a trajectory which has now sent it (with the influence of other gravitational forces) out of Norfolk and into the giddy excitement of Camden Town just a mile from where I used to live as an impoverished articled clerk.
A further full circle has been brought about by the change in logo of the Solicitors Journal. My other job (to fill the back pages of the Solicitors Journal with something which has nothing at all to do with law) was launched when I wrote for the late lamented Law magazine. And who published it? No prizes: Sweet & Maxwell, the new proprietors of the Solicitors Journal. So, beggin' your pardon sirs, nice to have you back.
And that just leaves me to say to you all at Dawbarns: you may think that you are safe from further revelations now that I am moving to Camden Town, but if I cannot find a vegetarian, a man with a beard or a decent feminist, I shall come back and write about you, so don't think you're off the hook yet.

Richard Barr is still a partner at Dawbarns, but will shortly become a partner with Hodge Jones & Allen in Camden Town. He will remain a consultant with Dawbarns, and if he knows whether he is coming or going by the time he appears again on this page it will be nothing short of a miracle.

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in April 1998