Yes I know. I had a blogging spurt recently and then it just went nowhere and I ain’t posted for a few weeks.

There are two reasons for my apparent quietness.

Firstly, Rachel, Corey, Bump and I upped sticks from our 3-bedroom terraced house in Oakdale to a 4-bedroom new-build detached house in Abercarn.

Moving house is something I would not want to repeat. While the move in itself went well, it was a mammoth task as it took 5 trips in a Transit-sized van as well as 4 cars making several trips to move all our stuff, taking up a huge chunk of a day and an hour or so the next.

Needless to say, we love our new home and have been busy ever since putting our stamp on it. It’s so lovely to have the extra room.

The second reason is a shame. Following my post “Are there any Deaf left?”, someone took it upon themselves to contact my employer to complain about some of my comments.

Now, in hindsight I do understand that some of my comments in that post are somewhat controversial and that given my senior management post within RAD, I should have been more mindful of any implications this would have on RAD’s work and in particular the work of my colleagues on the senior management team. Lesson learnt.

What I was rather dismayed about was the fact that my comments about hard of hearing were seen as “discriminatory” and that hard of hearing people should think twice about coming to RAD/me for legal advice. I believe the two things (my views on hard of hearing people belonging to the Deaf community / their right to receive free legal advice) are completely separate. I have and do provide many hard of hearing individuals with legal advice, and have no qualms in doing so. This was rather a wake up call for me, and something I won’t be in a hurry to repeat, given my exposure to the Deaf community and the fact that hard of hearing people can access my services.

It’s a shame that my “voice” has to be stifled somewhat, but you know what? There’s more important things to concern myself with. There’s a lot more I can talk about than not without compromising my position as a senior manager and as a solicitor.

Let’s see what drivel I can come up with, eh?

Most of you will be aware that I’m a qualified solicitor specialising in employment and disability discrimination law.

I’m the only solicitor working for RAD at the moment, with a small team of caseworkers. As such this means when I take leave, there’s no one to take up my mantle in my absence. That in turn means I don’t usually get the opportunity to take leave without the inevitable email or deadline that simply can’t wait till I’m back at work, with the result that, you’re right, work invades my leave!

Take Friday as a case in point. I took the day off to drive myself, Rachel and Corey to Ipswich for Fellow Welshman and Suffolk Terp’s (thanks Deafinitely Girly for the anonymising peeps idea!) New Year’s/Engagement/New Job house party.

On Friday morning I was on MSN talking to a client about a Respondent’s draft Chronology and Facts which had been emailed to me around 5pm on Thursday to which a deadline of noon on Friday had been imposed to respond to with any issues, and phoning the Respondent in the same case (via my FT terp on MSN) to chase a response to our without prejudice offer of £15,000, who said they were still awaiting instructions from their client.

In the middle of all that, I had to go to the doctors to make an appointment for Corey, and then take him down for his appointment at 11.20pm. (He had a hyperventilatory infection but is ok now).

Before we left home at 12.20pm for Ipswich, the Respondent replied with a counter offer of £2,500, and I asked my client for his instructions.

By the time we arrived at a services on the M25 at around 3.45pm I still hadn’t received any instructions so chased client who instructed me to make an offer of £10,000. The Respondent then offered £5,000 which was accepted. It was 4.35pm at that point. We then had 25 minutes to agree the COT3 wording and make a full and binding agreement by 5pm so the ACAS Conciliator could inform the Tribunal that the case had been settled and the hearing listed for Monday vacated.

Talk about a stressful 25 minutes, particularly as Respondent threatened to withdraw offer if didn’t settle by 5pm.

All this on my day off!