Jennifer Hamill is an Associate at Drever and Heddle, a firm operating from offices in Thurso, Kirkwall Fraserburgh and Edinburgh. Jennifer relocated from Edinburgh to Halkirk, Caithness last Summer. She offers his latest insight into life and law in the land of the dark skies.

It has been a lovely Caithness month on balance. Drever and Heddle very foolishly promoted me earlier this month (while I’m sure that the powers that be will more than get their own back in the fee targets), it’s a nice touch to make me feel even more settled in this part of the world. It’s also been a bright and sunny July (mostly) offering some blue skies for our county shows and highland games and all the fun of rural summer life. Drever and Heddle have had a good show month. Our Trainee is the proud owner of this year’s Caithness Champion Horse and her boyfriend the Champion Cow (very big deals in a small county!). We also managed to make the local papers a few times and I even managed to winkle a red rosette jumping my tiny scruffy Highland pony, so a good month all in!

For me it’s also been a month of day trips. I finally made it up to the West coast towards Tongue and Durness (something that’s been on my “to do list” since moving last summer). The word stunning doesn’t do any justice to that jaw dropping stretch of Sutherland’s coast with amazing clear blue water and dramatic mountain back drops, that’s an easy one hour drive from our little village. I also “bagged” my first Munro since moving to the “flat marsh land” of Caithness. Ben Hope is lovely choice to muddy your walking boots after a long break , it’s a small (but perfectly formed) Munro, with views to die for and is a chilled and easy climb as best demonstrated by our little Labrador who despite never having been on a hill before managed to lap us about three times on the way up.

Client wise I have been relatively calm this month everything has been ticking along nicely and settling when it should, as if my clients were aware that the weather is much too nice to imprison their poor solicitor in the office much after five. I also had a very heart warming case of Wick’s first adoption under the new rules. A great morning in court with the air of a family party, we had delighted new parents, a bright and happy little girl and a smiling sheriff, all of which combined made for one of my most pleasant days in court to date.

However, there is one exception to my state of happy calm in one of the most torturous contact cases I’ve ever had the displeasure of being involved in. This case is the first time I have been faced with the truly irrational reality that the nearest mainland Child Contact Center to Thurso is in Elgin an impressive 145 miles away! Trying to persuade any sheriff that this is a legitimate distance for a one year old to travel for contact is a no go from the start. The fact that the mum is demanding supervised contact but not suggesting anyone suitable to supervise, that the dad works off shore and lives a good 2500 thousand miles away from our little part of the highlands, that there’s an almost empty matrimonial pot and a level of true hatred between the parties that means every single compromise require hours of fraught negotiation, all work together to create a case that not only makes me dread every single period of contact and every Child Welfare hearing but that makes me bound back so enthusiastically to my chilled out Corporate files that you would think that sitting quietly drafting a Distribution Agreement (where nobody is yelling or crying) was actually a dose of true legal bliss.

As there is no contact centre in the entire Highland region to facilitate this contact we have ending up relying on the good will of community support charities and registered child minders. Both of these options are far from ideal, neither have the right facilities or training (or neutrality) and the lack of facilities has made a situation that was always going to be bad edge very very close to being ridiculous.

Nevertheless, while living in the back of beyond may to some extent induce these situations by lack of resources, it is also blessed with the same ability to make it all better again…with a little bit of perfect calm. My new rural hobby this month is fishing. As I was sitting in my old firm in Edinburgh around this time last year a very enthusiastic partner (who also had a soft spot for this area) explained that moving to Caithness would be an excellent choice because of the quality of the fishing, a comment that made me smirk…surly I would never be bored enough to actually go fishing? I can solemnly say that on a gorgeous Saturday on Loch Watten while I was lying reading and sun bathing (and not even slightly bored) on the boat watching my better half fly fishing I finally decided I better give this a go (and not just in the competitive sense that he’d put on a decent show of riding my horse earlier in the week) so I cast my first fly and caught my first trout and it was pretty cool and rather relaxing. On that nestled little Loch my fraught contact case could not have been further from my mind. So I have once again been proved wrong by this amazing place, fishing is not so bad and even the worst working weeks can be forgotten on a beautiful loch…however, that said if someone does fancy opening a contact centre in Caithness or even Inverness as a retirement project you would absolutely be my new favourite person and doing this area a great service.

Anyway, August sees me plucked from my little rural idle and thrown back into the real world for a week as I’m off down to cover our Edinburgh office. Back to the buzz of the Court of Session and fringe festival Edinburgh, when the busiest court I’ve set foot in for months is Tain and busiest metropolis I’ve been near is Inverness. It will be a shock! However, I have no doubt that the cinema trips, restaurants and reunion with Starbucks will be very welcome for a few days. I also have a month of proofs (or more hopefully a month of settlements) ahead of me but time shall tell what August has in store for us all and what becomes of all these files. Hope everyone has a good one.

Jennifer