Jury duty day 15

At last, it’s the end.

After more deliberation we finally made up our minds at about 12:20pm. Not
without the help of a load of cakes I bought from a Starbucks coffee franchise
on the way to the court, however.

I was surprised at how nervous I got when the verdicts were being asked for,
and I wasn’t even the foreman. Having talked to my colleagues, they all found
this very stressful. If you’re interested, we found one person guilty of
violent disorder and unlawful wounding, another guilty for violent disorder
and the other three not guilty. Sentencing of the guilty won’t be for at
least 3 weeks as pre-sentencing reports have been asked for and we won’t
be there for that.

Afterwards, a group of us went down to the Head of the River pub, sat outside,
chatted, drank and managed to wind down and get over the stress of the verdict.
We all agreed that this was a very good idea in the end. We definitely needed
to get it all out of our systems.

At about 3:15pm we all went our separate ways. It’s strange that this group
of people who have been held so closely together and have gone through so
much together will now probably never see each other again. We all made temporary
friendships which are now over. In some ways it’s sad but the experiences
we had were not altogther pleasant and people just want to get back to their
normal lives now. The parting of the ways is a way of compartmentalising
the experience and partitioning it from the rest of their lives.

The rest of the afternoon, such as there was, has been taken up with talking
to people and not doing work as such. Happy Hour starts in about 25 minutes.
I only realised a little while ago that I haven’t had lunch!

Anyway, now it’s back to normal life. I’m free. I’m demobbed. What do I do now?