Charlotte John
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lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Charlotte John
@lottiejohn1.bsky.social
1.5K followers 800 following 570 posts
Barrister at Gatehouse. Private Client, COP, trusts, probate and property.
She/her
🏳️‍🌈 ally
Here for a bit of The Archers chat too.
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lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Those are the perks when you're living the Life of a Showgirl.
Taylor Swift's cat, Olivia stretching her back paw in the air.
October 25, 2025 at 9:14 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Good to see Lush catering to Chancery lawyers.
June 22, 2025 at 1:31 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Last January I committed to recording something positive in each day. This was a great practice which made me pay attention to the good in every day, including the hard ones. I used the app Diarium and it is just terrific (and subscription free). Lovely to look back over all the happy moments.
Screenshot from my journal entries for January 2024. Lots of photos of swimming, walking and time with friends and my daughter.
January 4, 2025 at 2:42 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
The smallest housemate has coined the phrase 'frivolous nomies' to describe the never-ending seasonal snacks and treats that we've been working our way through.
December 31, 2024 at 9:38 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Funny, Surreal, eerie. My second time seeing Slava's Snowshow. Go if you get a chance, it is quite magical.
A blizzard blasts through the theatre 3 clowns, two with enormously long feet and hats with floppy ears wearing green overcoats and playing accordions. One wearing a yellow baggie onesie and red fluffy slippers. A gaggle of clowns in green overcoats and hats with floppy ears sailing a bed across the stage.
December 28, 2024 at 10:01 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Life of a peripatetic barrister. I've slept this week in a 'box' off the Tottenham Court Road followed by two nights in one of Newcastle's slightly shabbier offerings. Train crumpets definitely making life a little better.
Laptop, bottle of water and buttered crumpets on a train table
December 6, 2024 at 10:19 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Opening paragraph from Lady Hale in R (C) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2017] UKSC 72 🏳️‍⚧️
We lead women's lives: we have no choice?. Thus has the Chief Justice of Canada, the Rt Hon Beverley McLachlin, summed up the basic truth that women and men do indeed lead different lives. How much of this is down to unquestionable biological differences, how much to social conditioning, and how much to other people's views of what it means to be a woman or a man, is all debatable and the accepted wisdom is perpetually changing. But what does not change is the importance, even the centrality, of gender in any individual's sense of self. Over the centuries many people, but particularly women, have bitterly resented and fought against the roles which society has assigned to their gender. Genuine equality between the sexes is still a work in progress. But that does not mean that such women or men have not felt entirely confident that they are indeed a woman or a man. Gender dysphoria is something completely different - the overwhelming sense that one has been born into the wrong body, with the wrong anatomy and the wrong physiology. Those of us who, whatever our occasional frustrations with the expectations of society or our own biology, are nevertheless quite secure in the gender identities with which we were born, can scarcely begin to understand how it must be to grow up in the wrong body and then to go through the long and complex process of adapting that body to match the real self. But it does not take much imagination to understand that this is a deeply personal and private matter; that a person who has undergone gender reassignment will need the whole world to recognise and relate to her or to him in the reassigned gender; and will want to keep to an absolute minimum any unwanted disclosure of the history. This is not only because other people can be insensitive and even cruel; the evidence is that transphobic incidents are increasing and that transgender people experience high levels of anxiety about this. It is also because of their deep need to live successf…
November 24, 2024 at 9:03 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Well, quite. The Guide to Judicial Conduct also says this (which the social media guidance does not appear to make allowance for).
Screen shot Guide to Judicial Conduct published July 2023: Fee-paid judges Fee-paid judges can, where appropriate, participate in the media and engage in public debate. However, they must ensure that they do not publicly make statements that undermine their reputation of impartiality and neutrality. Fee-paid judges must take great care to ensure that they do not reveal the fact that they sit in a judicial capacity, or that they are described as a judge, when speaking in public, save when they are speaking on strictly legal matters in politically uncontroversial forums. This is in order to prevent their personal views being construed as the views of the judiciary.
November 17, 2024 at 10:37 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Anyone else using LiquidText? Very useful app - you import PDFs and then have a workspace alongside where you can make notes, insert excerpts and draw links between points in multiple documents. I'm finding it slightly 'sticky' when scrolling and wondering if it is the age of my iPad or the app.
Gif showing Liquidtext's functionality, linking snippets of documents.
November 16, 2024 at 1:40 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Latest listen. Found this a bit of a slog. Essentially a murder mystery set in a stately home, but the protagonist is trapped in a sort of Groundhog Day in which he wakes up in the body of a different person each day and has to solve the crime to escape. Tortuous, and not in a good way. #booksky
Cover art: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
November 9, 2024 at 9:39 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
My two favourite pumpkins (is one a melonkin?) From our travels tonight.
A simply carved pumpkin (or melon?) with triangular eyes and jagged mouth and green striped skin. A glowing orange pumpkin with intricately carved witch on broomstick flying through the clouds.
October 31, 2024 at 9:43 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
This reads straight out of that Fake Showbiz News account. In fact I'm quite delighted that real Helen Mirren's real ponderings are even more random than fake Helen Mirren.
Screenshot tweet from Fake Showbiz News. Dame Helen Mirren says it seems unfair that Cathy Dennis and Shakira are credited as co-writers on 'She Wolf when Dennis pretty much wrote the whole song and Shakira's only contribution was the "a-woo!" bit. "Guess that's showbiz," she chuckled
October 25, 2024 at 2:24 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
This was great fun - recommended read / listen. Similar sort of vein to Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series but with the protagonist investigating her own murder. Very funny. #BookSky
Cover art Maz Evans, Over My Dead Body.
October 20, 2024 at 2:56 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Latest listen. Gripping retelling of the Dreyfus affair. A shocking miscarriage of justice, which I confess I knew nothing of prior to listening. A touch of Dumas about it, partly in the facts of the saga itself, and partly the writing. Highly recommended.
Cover art. An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
October 11, 2024 at 10:35 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Rest in Peace, Dame Maggie Smith.

Here she is in the last film I watched her in, playing Thetis in Clash of the Titans.
Dame Maggie Smith looking heavenly in a white gown playing Thetis in Clash of the Titans
September 27, 2024 at 1:44 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Reading the Wikipedia entry for Ashford v Thornton, it is such a striking case, starting with a very modern and recognisable trial process before pivoting to the prospect of the barbaric relic of trial by combat. Then this dreadful bit of victim blaming in Mary Ashford's headstone.
Mary Ashford’s gravestone, Sutton Coldfield churchyard, which reads: As a warning to female virtue, and a humble Monument to female chastity, This stone marks the grave of MARY ASHFORD, Who, in the 20th year of her age, Having incautiously repaired to a Scene of amusement, without proper protection, Was brutally violated and murdered On the 27th of May 1817.
September 23, 2024 at 9:18 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
‘Crow Collects’ by Cori Lee Marvin.
Painting of a crow perched on a chair, against faded green patterned wallpaper. The crow has a mirror ball dangling from its beak and a collection of shiny mirror-finished items such as teapots on a blue table in front.
September 22, 2024 at 8:43 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Came home yesterday to find this beautifully illustrated book on rebellious figures from folklore. An incredibly thoughtful and unexpected gift from @mambarlife.bsky.social
I see the author has a podcast too.
Cover art for REBEL FOLKLORE, featuring water goddess Mami Wata, pictured as a mermaid with a large snake wrapped around her. Spread from the book on La Madre Monte, a figure in Colimbian folklore. She is shown in a swamp with an alligator peeping out of the water in the foreground and a black jaguar behind her.
September 22, 2024 at 4:57 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
300 days of keeping a silly owl happy. Can't say I have picked up a great deal of Welsh but nos da to you all.
Duolingo badge for completing a 300 day streak.
September 19, 2024 at 10:42 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Bright and breezy out there today.
Tree with red berries against a blue sky. The sun is behind me, casting flare across my face. Red poppy in a field of stubble
September 19, 2024 at 8:08 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
I got excited about the new emoji with bags under its eyes
Exhausted yellow-face emoji with bags under its eyes.
September 17, 2024 at 12:56 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Yes, trying to inject a bit of lightness and levity into my feed. The one account I really miss from X is Frank Corry's Glendalough Lake account, from which these lovely pictures come.
Photo of Glendalough Lake by Frank Corry, reflecting the sky and mountains at sunrise. A wisp of cloud sits above the water. Photo by Frank Corry of Glendalough Lake, nestled in the mountains on a cloudy day. The mountains are dark and the water is choppy. Photo by Frank Corry of Glendalough Lake, reflecting the sky and mountains at sunrise. The light casts a copper hue on the water, the mountains are dark. Photo by Frank Corry of Glendalough Lake, reflecting the sky and mountains. The sky is blue and there is a sheet of wispy patchy cloud. The vegetation is in shades of green, with some yellow and orange. The water mirrors the sky and scenery.
September 17, 2024 at 12:20 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
There were other books that I deemed better novels overall (see yesterday's skeet) but taking this as my most need-to-know-what-happens-next listen of the year, I'd say Gone Girl.
Cover art: GONE GIRL GLLIAN FLYNN READ BY KIRBY HEYBORNE AND JULIA WHELAN
September 17, 2024 at 7:14 AM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Silliness, but I arrived earlier than I'd realised (though only active more recently).

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #241,137!
User 241,137
September 16, 2024 at 10:04 PM
lottiejohn1.bsky.social
Best audiobook listens of the year so far. None are really classical thrillers, but all have a mounting sense of tension. The Bee Sting was the stand out - so many strands of tragedy, buried secrets and shifting perspectives. Not sure what to listen to next.
#BookSky
Cover art: Paul Murray, The Bee Sting Cover art: Liane Moriaty, Big Little Lies Cover art: Jennie Godfrey, The List of Suspicious Things Cover art: Suzie Miller, Prima Facie.
September 16, 2024 at 7:59 AM