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?

Well, today was the end of the trial as far as the other members of the court are concerned… After a one hour forty minutes round-up by the judge we went into deliberation.

Late this afternoon we were still deliberating so the judge called us down to the court and told us to go home and come back tomorrow.

I wonder if we’ll finish tomorrow?

Today’s fun was listening to 6 speeches by the barristers… Yes, it took all day!

At 3:40 when the last one finished the judge said he’d start his one tomorrow
morning at 10am. Hopefully this means that tomorrow will be the last day
as directly after the judge’s summing up and direction on the law we will
go into deliberation.

Of course, then we have the problem of picking a foreman before trawling
through the evidence and coming up with a verdict for each of the defendants
and for each of the indictments. Still, we SHOULD be finished by the
end of tomorrow. If we don’t then we’ll have to continue Friday. I don’t
know if we’d have to spend the night in a hotel in that case.

I’m now waiting at work for a hob-nobbing session with a committee overviewing
the report into how our department works for reasons of funding. At least
it will be free food.

Well, we managed to get into court by 10:40 this morning.. And we didn’t go out much either.. only a 5 minute comfort break for one of the barristers (which took 40 minutes) just before lunch.

Anyway, we’ve (probably) got through all the evidence now. Assuming that the debate the barristers were going to have after we left doesn’t mean that we have another witness to hear we should get on to the set of summing up speeches from the barristers followed by a speech by the judge before we go out to decide.

The light is at the end of the tunnel!

Well, we were asked to get to the court by 09:40 so as to be in court by 09:45 for an early start.

Well, We were all there.. There was a phone call.. “Don’t come down, we’ll phone you when we’re ready.” Fifty minutes later, at about half ten we got a phone call to go down stairs.. which we all did. We sat down there in the jury waiting room for about 5 minutes until the court usher came in and told us to not bother and go back upstairs again.. which we did.

We finally got into court at about 11:10. By 12:10 we were out and off for the rest of the day as the judge had other business to attend to.

So, having been released for the rest of the day i wandered back to the department via Felson’s baguette shop. As I entered the department I bumped into Jen, one of the 3rd year undergrads who’d done strange things to thier hair for Red Nose Day. She told me that the other person, Cian (pronounced K-ee-an) was up in the UG computer room and that I REALLY should see his hair.. so I did.

His hair was a sight to see. Half the left side of his head was shaven, the right dyed red. The left side of the beard was still there but the right was shaven. Jen and Cian, together, have managed to raise 1300 pounds in sponsorship. Quite a good sum, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Whilst up in the UG computer room one of the other 3rd years around at the time with whom I’ve been befriend at happy hour came up and asked if I was going downstairs for lunch. I was, so we both went outside into the lovely warm sunshine. Others joined us. T’was a pleasant lunch break.

The afternoon was taken up with normal work things.. doing some of those more important things which have been hanging around while I’ve been doing other things.

This evening I’ve cooked the nice Sainsbury’s Ultimate Cumberland Chipolata sausages I didn’t use over the weekend, eating half of their number along with peas and the remaining batch of the miniture new potatos I’d bought on Sunday. Yummy.

Later I watched Enterprise which was a little dull (as usual) and very derivative (as usual). Indeed, it was almost a re-run of the old Next Generation episode called Damok. (If you’re wondering, I’ve got about 5 Star Trek videos and Damok is one of the episodes on one of them which I didn’t buy it for. I don’t know all the names of all the episodes. I’m not quiet that sad. ;-))

Anyway, 09:55 start at court tomorrow, hopefully. So, bed soon.

With all the excitement of Alec arriving, I forgot to mention that Mat (nobby, sleipnir_) turned up just after Em & Jerry arrived and we all had a nice chat.

Laura thought Mat was a big hit too.

Well, Friday was spent mostly waiting in a waiting room. Or at least it felt that way. In fact, due to the judge having other work to do we sat waiting ’til 12:45 before being called down to the court for a half hour stint before lunch.

The afternoon’s proceedings went on and on. It finally ended at about 4:30.

Of course, this meant that I had to rush back to the dept. to pick up my stuff and then cycle straight home to be ready for Em, Jerry and little Laura’s arrival. They arrived just before 6pm and this is when the enjoyable but exhausting weekend began.

The last couple of days have become a daze full of pretty happy, chattering toddler, walks in the sunshine and an evening with a full house containing not only a toddler but a group of adults and a 4 year old… Tom, Shona and little Tanaqui came around and visited… we had a lovely chinese takeaway buffet.

So, it’s Sunday, Em, Jerry and Laura have all gone, I’ve not done the washing up but other things have been cleared up and now Alec’s popped in..

A good weekend, I call it.

What can I say?

Well, as usual, there was lots of waiting. At least the judge appologised saying that in this case there had been rather more points of law raised than is usual which meant that we had to go out of the court room a great deal.

I got a question passed to the judge for him to ask the witness.. which he duly did.

This evening I’ve gone to Sainsbury’s to buy extra groceries ready for Em, Jerry (_jander_) and little Laura’s visit. I’ve also dysoned the whole house, done all the washing up and set up the sofabed in bed mode and made it.

Now I can just sit back and relax a bit before bedtime. I’ve currently got Gary Numan & the Tubeway Army’s live album “Living Ornaments’79” on the hifi whilst my video records Buffy and Angel for viewing after my visitors leave on Sunday.

Lots and lots of time was wasted today sitting in the room outside the court waiting for barristers to slug it out on points of law.

In fact, so far it’s been on average about 1.5 hours per day we’ve had to wait there for this to happen. You can see why court cases overrun. As far as this one goes, it’s taken about a day to get through the first defence part and there are 5 in total.. I guess there’s at least 5 more days to go then.

Back to court at 10am again tomorrow.. I doubt we’ll get into the jury box ’til 11 though.