Hair today: Obiter last week profiled would-be poet law-reate Simon Lee, the first solicitor to our knowledge to take part in poetry 'slams' (a form of competitive poetry reading). And to slake readers' thirst for culture still further, we now have the following poem from City solicitor Philip Pollecoff, who was commissioned by BBC Radio 4's 'Law in Action' to mark the imminent demise of wigs in civil cases.


Elegy to The Wig

What of the robing rooms where you'd watch

an advocate turn from portly suburban toff,

stilettoed Sloane or middling exec,

into someone solemn and robust as if all that

is beneath is compelled by the wig?



And what of the aging of the wig

that changes over years under doleful streams

of court room light, from novice off white to

fortress grey; as the barrister ages,

so they both become ripe.



What of the Spy cartoons that hang in chambers?

What of the Pen and Wig? That meaning now

one step removed from modern life.

The head dress of the bar shall go

like early closing or tobacco walls

a token of that old charm is dispatched.



Some fear losing their wig is the beginning of the end

they'll soon be wearing a hoody

with a few gold chains, but even that's preferred

to being mistaken for solicitors.



Is not the court as much a stage as place of work?

When a client's convinced his case

is merely cost and dire consequence

those in wigs and bands can sit him down

in a strangely quiet commanding way

persuade the litigant to see the light of day -

shamanism perhaps but no worse for that.



Whilst we know on a hot day a wig's

not the best way to keep a cool head,

what symbol of authority is left instead?

Surely not the perma-tan or the Rolex watch

that grace the minor boardrooms of the rest of us?



From Lincoln's Inn to Fountain Court

the bell may toll for the wigs' demise,

whilst the clerks still bill by the hour

no one will dare stop all the clocks,

not even for a sigh.



Like the vicar who today plucks a guitar

is not losing the wig the equal for the bar?



A reading of the poem by Mr Pollecoff will be broadcast by 'Law in Action' in the coming weeks: www.bbc.co.uk/lawinaction.