Poetic justiceObiter wonders whether some solicitors have too much time on their hands.

Witness Gerald Sherriff, a solicitor at London firm Lawrence Jones, who has sent us a poem 'giving some indication of the range of residential tenancies'.

Prepared for a lecture he is giving next month, the Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired poem is entitled 'The very model of a residential tenancy' and starts:There is no single model of a residential tenancyTo learn them all is sometimes thought to be a form of penancyThey vary in so many ways depending on the starting dateAnd also, once upon a time, depending on the local rate.It continues in a similar tone, finishing five stanzas later with the number of ways to rhyme tenancy fast running out: Some are statutory and yet others periodicAnd there's written ones and verbal ones and no doubt electronicIn short, with all types above and those there isn't time to sayThere are too many species of the residential tenan-say.