AS YOU read this, quite probably with Arctic winds battering rain off

your window, think where else you might have been if you only possessed

a low golf handicap to match your law degree. To wit, at Novi Sancti

Petri, Chiclana de la Frontera, near Cadiz in Southern Spain, for the

inaugural European Legal Team Championship.

Today, having hopefully seen off the Dutch yesterday, our boys face

the Auld Enemy, and Ken Pritchard, secretary of the Law Society of

Scotland (with president Brian Adair and past incumbent Jock Smith also

on the 10-strong team) was, as they say, quietly confident as they

prepared for departure on Saturday. As ''organiser, administrator,

travel agent, and general factotum'', he said: ''If we have higher

handicaps than some of our rivals, it won't stop us trying. We will come

back burdened with a large trophy.'' The quaich in question has been put

up by sponsors the Royal Bank of Scotland, who say the organisers hope

to make the event triennial. In terms of their annual encounter,

Scotland lags England 5-4 so today marks a chance to even the score.

* As a footnote, it is worth pointing out that the Scottish party for

Cadiz includes three wives. When the Edinburgh Press Club staged golfing

trips to Spain no wives were taken, and indeed, unknown to the wives, no

clubs were taken either.

Lingua franca

THE pretext for the international golf extravaganza, as for a European

legal conference staged in Edinburgh last week, is the single market,

and if being sans frontiers means we are going to parley more with our

continental comrades Devil's Advocate can heartily recommend Euroslang,

Roger Hutchinson's ''practical guide to boozing and bonking from Mykonos

to Malaga''. A snip from Mainstream at just #4.99, it would help Ken

Pritchard and his team come up with phrases such as ''Wir waren

bestohlen worden!'' (We wuz robbed!) or ''Veinard!'' (Lucky sod!).

But it is in the tricky area where sexual metaphor confounds literal

translation that the book is particularly valuable. Some, such as the

fact the French call a French letter an English cloak, are reasonably

well known, but in view of the current investigation at the Faculty here

are a few amber lights: Watch out for a Frenchman who offers to show you

his andouille a col roule (sausage in a polo-neck), he may have mistaken

you for de la famille tuyau de la poele (of the group with a tube in the

stove).

The Italian equivalent would be to ask if you are un finocchio (a

fennel bulb), a German might inquire whether you are vom anderen Ufer

(from the other shore), while a Spaniard might refer to you as una

cajetilla (a packet of cigarettes).

In fact, for a variety of reasons, it would pay to cut all references

to taking onions, peeling lentils, opening cans of pate, brushing the

floor, or turning the key in the lock, and avoid mentioning coffee

beans, sea shells, water cress, chickens, car horns, torpedos,

fence-posts or Spanish omelettes.

Otherwise you may end up in the hands of the polis, variously known as

pigs, donkeys, bulls or chickens.

D'alliance

ALSO prone to linguistic misunderstanding is the recently revamped

watering hole just down the High Street from the Supreme Courts in

Edinburgh. Obviously oblivious to the nuances of the Auld Alliance, the

legal fraternity has taken to referring to Les Partisans in more prosaic

terms as Les Paterson's.

Hot nuts

AN accused representing himself at Edinburgh Sheriff Court said he

would be unable to make his trial date because he would be working,

selling hot chestnuts. This brought a warning from the Bench that should

he fail to show up a warrant would be issued for his arrest, or as the

police escorting him from the dock put it: ''Better turn up or you'll

get your nuts roasted!''

Dynasty

THE reputation of Parliament House for dynastic succession continues

with the announcement that James Hope, son of the Lord President, has

applied to join the Faculty. Sir Thomas Hope was Lord Advocate in the

early seventeenth century and a Lord Hope was Lord President early last

century. He had a son who was Lord Justice Clerk, from whose brother,

James Hope WS, the current line continues. The Hopes' dynastic rivals

are the Clydes (two Lord Presidents and a present-day Judge), the

Camerons (Jock and Kenny), and the Emslies (Lord President and two sons

currently QCs).

Bastions of the Law (No 23)

SIR William Sutherland will be 59 in a few days time and Devil's

Advocate, unlike some other columnists on this newspaper, wishes him

many happy returns. At the Christmas reception for journalists at Fettes

police HQ last year Sir William spoke about the problems the police had

experienced with their public image in England as a result of

miscarriages of justice. He contrasted this with better public relations

in Scotland built up over the years and hoped this would continue.

Well, it hasn't worked out that way. The separate but linked cases of

the Fettesgate break-in, with its immunity deal to secure the return of

the documents, and the leak of the so-called Magic Circle report

alleging a gay conspiracy to pervert justice, have led to five

investigations, internal and external, being set up over a three-month

period which has been a personal nightmare for the chief constable.

But would the resignation demanded by those who say the buck stops on

his desk have been a good thing for the citizenry of Lothian and

Borders? Such a course might be honourable in some abstract, theoretical

way but it would be entirely negative in terms of policy and continuing

progress by the force. That is why councillors on the Labour-controlled

police board -- who, according to the mythology of the English system,

should want to confront and humiliate a chief constable -- have been

consistently supportive of Sir William.

His record of openness and self-examination has won over potential

critics outside the force, and a reserved but generous manner did the

same for any inside his force who were sceptical about change.

As he has pointed out, public complaints are at one of the lowest

levels anywhere. The gay community, anxious about the recent

controversies, sought and were swiftly given a high-level meeting. Are

these things to be jeopardised by him being made a public scapegoat? Let

us sincerely hope not.