Tuesday, August 13, 2013

The universe is in our house

For a mortgage application I have been asked to confirm whether or not we have offsite garage/parking. Here is the solicitor's definition of "offsite":
By “offsite” we mean, not attached to your property/not within your property boundaries or in a separate location.
That sentence appears to exclude the entire universe, implying that the entire universe is "onsite". Their definition suggests that "offsite" is, firstly, anywhere that isn't in our property boundaries. That seems sensible. But then it also says that "offsite" is anywhere that isn't in a separate location. But logically, anywhere that's in a separate location is, well, anywhere. I am doubtful that we could use this in a court to prove that we own the entire universe, but we do appear to have the universe "reclining in our hair", or at least on our garden seat.

I thought that lawyers were taught to be precise with their language. In fact, I remember hearing that they were taught not to use any punctuation within sentences, to ensure that sentences were not written ambiguously. Perhaps not all solicitors got the memo (or perhaps the memo itself was badly written).