Nine holiday packing tips for the carry-on bag generation

Unless there is a very good reason to put luggage in the hold (such as when my son insisted on taking his cricket bat to Spain one summer and I had to put it in an enormous suitcase to get it there), I always fly hand luggage (carry-on bag) only.

With family who live on the European continent, I have to fly if I visit them and have become ever more efficient when it comes to packing a case.

So here are my nine tips for trouble-free packing:

1. Wear your heaviest or bulkiest items of clothing. For example, denim jeans are heavy, so if you want to take them on holiday and are looking to save luggage weight, wear them;
2. Ditch your usual handbag and use one which is small and flat which can be squeezed under your jacket or into the suitcase;
3. Likewise, ditch the soap-bag and make-up bag. I know they look lovely in your hotel bathroom, but do you really need them? If you are taking toiletries and cosmetics they will have to go in a plastic bag to get through security anyway, so why take more bags in your case? In my ruthless bid to keep the weight down, my soap-bag, and make-up bag have to go – zip-lock plastic food bags do the job just as well;
4. Roll your clothes. It is counter-intuitive, but your clothes will have fewer creases in them if you do. And you can fit far more in a suitcase that way, believe me;
5. Use packing cubes. These have revolutionised my holiday packing and I’m like a convert, enthusiastically singing their praises to all who might listen. They hold a lot of clothes (rolled, of course) neatly in place. I’m a fan of eBags (http://amzn.to/2sxTI1X). They are not the cheapest, but so far mine have lasted for five years and still look brand new;
6. Pack a sarong, large soft pashmina or scarf, depending on the climate and keep it in the case front pocket if there is one, (or near the suitcase zip opening), to make it easy to find. In-flight air-conditioning can be too cold and a pashmina or sarong keeps the chill away;
7. You only ever wear three pairs of shoes: something pretty which will go with all your going-out clothes and something comfortable for sightseeing or driving the hire-car. If it’s a beach holiday, throw in the flip-flops too. Anything else will just take up space and add to the weight in your suitcase. Wear the heaviest or bulkiest of them when you travel;
8. Pack an extension lead, plug adapter, charger and cable. My son goes nowhere abroad without his four-plug socket extension lead. It means you only need one socket adapter to be able to use all your electricals with their usual plugs attached. A brilliant idea! A pre-charged portable battery pack is also useful in case your flight is delayed and there isn’t a plug socket in sight.
9. Never assume that the hotel hairdryer is going to work. This is the one item I always carry, unless I am going to stay with family or friends. There are plenty of lightweight travel dryers on the market: I have a earlier version of this lightweight model from Boots The Chemist. It folds in half, making it very compact https://www.boots.com/tresemme-travel-hair-dryer-10199250

OK, so are you ready? Then start packing…

Creating court bundles – preparation is key

Putting the court bundle together is often the standard job for junior staff in many law firms. When I was a trainee, with a newbie secretary who knew less than I did, we learned by experience some of the mistakes you can make when putting court papers together.

When I read about the Coventry v Lawrence Supreme Court judges struggling through their court bundles earlier this week, it brought back memories of some of those trials and tribulations and I thought now would be an ideal time to look at good practice and commonly made mistakes.

In an ideal world, creation of the court bundle should not be left to the trainee or junior staff. Even though it can be time consuming and, let’s be honest, quite boring, this is how your case will be seen by the trial judge for the first time. It is your only opportunity in most cases to make a good first impression. If junior staff members are working on the bundles, their work must be supervised by someone more senior who has a good working knowledge of the claim.

The starting point is the list of documents. Earlier on in the proceedings each party will have made and served their list of documents which identified those documents which exist or had existed, or which exist, but which the party claims a right to withhold from inspection. See CPR 31 for the detail. As there is a continuing duty to disclose, this may not be the authoritative list of all relevant documentation and a careful examination of the file should be made to ensure all relevant documents have been located.

The trial bundles are the responsibility of the claimant’s legal representatives. The detailed rules are in PracticeDirection 39A. I will not go into the detail – just some useful pointers.

Manual bundles
It is possible to create your bundles manually (ie paper in folders) or electronically. These notes assume you are creating a manual bundle. If you are tasked with creating an electronic version of the bundle, then even a reasonably basic version of adobe acrobat can be used. Once you have assembled the bundle, you can scan it in its entirety, insert pages, remove pages, update the index and auto-number the pages. There are more sophisticated bits of software out there specifically for this task, but I won’t look at those here. 

The folder
Choose a sturdy lever arch file for the court bundle. Where the papers extend to more than one file, ensure they are clearly marked and numbered. The case name, court and court number should also be printed clearly on the file spine.

·       Where the total number of pages is more than 100, you should insert use numbered dividers between groups of documents. (CPRPD 39A 3.5).

·       There is no hard and fast rule on how many pages should be in each folder. You just need to make sure that it isn’t over-full and bursts open in the post so that the judge’s copy is all in the wrong order. Believe me: there is nothing worse than sitting behind a fuming counsel while the judge complains that he can’t find page 97 in the bundle...

Before you punch holes in any papers ask yourself these questions

·       What is the hearing or trial about?

·       What are the key issues which are going to be aired in court?

·       What do we need to prove?

·       What evidence have we got to prove it?

·       What other documents will the court need?

If it’s an interim hearing of some sort, then you will be able to decide which documents to put in and which to leave out once you have answered these questions. If it’s a trial, then you need to follow the practice direction and include (PD39A rule 3.2) the documents listed there. 

Agreeing the bundle
Make sure that you ask the other parties’ legal representatives which documents they want to see included in the bundle. Do this as early as possible, as sometimes there will be disputes about this – particularly if the other side has just ‘found’ a document which hasn’t been disclosed before.

If there are a lot of medical notes in a personal injury claim for example, you may want to agree with the other side to only include those notes which each side agrees are relevant. I have seen judges get very grumpy about having to wade through several inches of copied medical notes to discover that only the last three pages are relevant. Less is sometimes more.

Assembling the documents
No hole-punch needed yet. Papers should be in chronological order and grouped into sections. For example, the pleadings should all be together; witness statements (possibly sub divided into claimant/defendant if there are several); medical report; expert reports; photographs and so on.

Once you are happy that you have all the papers you need, create a draft index, itemising each document and grouping them as described above. Send the draft index to the other parties and ask them to agree it.

Putting the bundle together
Ok, now you can get the hole punch out. Assemble the bundle in the lever arch file, insert post it notes where the dividers will go and, once you are happy with it, number each page sequentially (bottom right of the page – not too close to the edge) and update the draft index so that it matches exactly the order of the bundle, including the page numbers which you have just created.

This is your master bundle. Take the documents back out of the file and copy them, so that you have identical copies: one for each of the following:

·       Claimant’s solicitor

·       Claimant’s counsel

·       Defendant’s solicitor

·       Defendant’s counsel

·       One each for any other parties (second defendant/Part 20 – solicitor and counsel)

·       The judge (or if more than one judge – one for each judge)

·       The witness box.

Return the documents to the file. Insert the dividers. Check there are no missing pages. Repeat for each copy of the bundle.

Securely package up the files and post or DX them to the other parties.  Make sure that the files cannot be crushed in the post – it’s not just over-filling which makes them disintegrate upon arrival.

Additional pages
You can be sure, that as soon as you have numbered the pages and created six copies of the bundle, you will be asked to insert an additional page or pages. Don’t panic. All you need to do is ascertain exactly where they need to go into the bundle, then sub-number or alphabetise them. For example. If you need to insert three pages between page 97 and 98, you could number them 97a, 97b, 97c. Alternatively, you could number them 97.1, 97.2, 97.3 and so on. Don’t forget that you will need to amend the index too. If you have already sent the bundles out, then serve an updated index with the additional pages as soon as possible.

It’s in the bag: packing for a bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition

I bought the 65 litre rucksack (“black please, not pink or anything” said my teenage son) and stared at the kit list in horror. Once the sleeping bag, bivvy bag, roll-mat, waterproof trousers, spare jumper, spare gloves, multiple pairs of socks and underpants had all gone into the bag, there wasn’t much room left for the other vital stuff such as food and the very random stuff such as a scratchy pan scrub and tea-towel. 

I found a dry sack for vital things such as matches, plasters and spare torch batteries, but what food to pack? For someone who can empty the bread-bin in a day and make a serious dent in the contents of the fridge, my son was curiously uninterested in what he planned to eat. “Just noodles and biscuits” he suggested. 

Well, that was no good, so we embarked on a tasting session: boil-in-the-bag dinners were tracked down on the internet and tested in our kitchen (for the record, the Wayfarer chicken curry was not too bad) and lists of snacks were drawn up. At the last minute, I threw in two packets of Super Noodles just in case. 

The night before the expedition, my son started to pack his rucksack. An exchange by Messenger with his team-mates ensued. “Is a10kg rucksack normal?” asked one of the girls, sounding worried. My son weighed his – it was 12 kilos and still being packed. Then there was an emergency pitta bread purchase: apparently one of the team was bringing paté. This was proving to be a very middle-class D of E expedition. 

With no agreement on who was going to carry the tent, off he went the next morning, looking for all the world as if he would be gone for a fortnight, so much stuff was crammed into his bag.

Three days later, we are both much the wiser. What did we learn?

Well, the super noodles got eaten and at least one of the boil-in-the-bag meals is back in the cupboard (five minutes is too long to wait, apparently).

Pop tarts do not travel well – they turn to crumbs quite easily. All those Himalayan mountaineers who swear by them as a boost when climbing forgot to mention that they were probably frozen solid in their packaging.

Little cheeses in their red waxy shells go down a treat.

Teenagers do not use bivvy bags to cover their sleeping bags in a leaky tent, although they will later wish they had.

Finally, it was pointless packing lots of spare clothes: only the socks got changed. Mothers of teenage boys take note...

Status update: my profile is locked

According to research by recruitment company Oilandgaspeople.com, employers now routinely vet social media profiles to find, or reject, potential candidates. The pretty comprehensive survey of 7,000 firms found that over 80 per cent have looked up candidates’ social media output and 64 per cent had rejected applicants as a result of what they found.

This is backed up by research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which shows that two in five employers look at candidates’ social media activity and most won’t bother to tell you, either.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at this development. I’m sure some of you are confident that your Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Flickr accounts will boost your employment prospects. I know of several Facebook pages which are practically works of art: their owners are funny, creative types who do not hide their light under a bushel, so to speak. 

But if you are like me, this may not be the case at all: a quick look at my Facebook account reveals a discussion about the benefits of chocolate covered coffee beans to try and stay awake, followed by an exchange about how terrifying it is to fly to Glasgow in a turbo-prop plane, complete with my friends’ helpfully graphic descriptions of how sick they were when they did something similar.  Hmmm. This may not be the impression I’d hope to give to potential recruiters if I was on the job hunt.

The CEO of Oilandgaspeople.com says that “Social media is now a powerful recruitment tool for getting the right person in position faster and cheaper than traditional forms of advertising.” I suggest that if you are applying for a job, you might want to tidy up your social media accounts for a while. Just saying...