Well, I’ve just got in after a rather nice evening out with friends.

It started after work with me cycling home quickly, dumping my stuff, sitting down for a few minutes and then driving back to the department.

Having deposited my motor vehicle in the car park, I wandered over to a cash machine, got some money out, as you do and then preambulated to the Royal Oak public house to meet up with Paul and Jenn.

Others subsiquently arrived and much pepsi and other beveraged were imbibed. We then wandered as a group over to the Bombay curry house in Walton Street and had a jocular time eating and merry making.

Leaving the Bombay, the group split up and went their separate ways. I went along with John as Katie was wishing the two dutch girls who used to live at their house goodbye and I’d offered to give everyone a lift home.

So, off to the Tapas bar in Little Clarendon Street we did go. I was surprised to find in the aforementioned establishment not only Katie and the dutch girls but also Sam and a number of others.

I had to be sociable, so I sat down with the group and had a thoroughly good chat.

Following this, we all just had to go over the road to George & Davis’ Ice Cream Cafe. Well, you have to do these things, don’t you. Once there lots of ice cream was eaten. I just had some mango & passion fruit.. yum.

We said our good-byes, John, Katie and Sam wandered back to the departmetn with me and I dropped them off at home before coming back here.

I call that a good night out.

Well, it’s Wednesday and seeing as I’m off jury duty there’s not a great deal to talk about.

Yesterday, when going into town to pay those bills I’d not got around to
paying whilst on jury duty, I passed the Magdalen Road Odeon cinema and saw
that this Friday (28th March) they’re showing the Rocky Horror Picture Show
and that it was to be introduced by Richard O’Brien himself.

When I got back to the department I decided to e-mail a number of the people
around here to see if any would like to go along. I’ve never actually got
around to going to one of these showings though I almost did a couple of
year ago when I was going to visit a friend in Liverpool to do so but family
things on her end got in the way so I never went. (She suggested that I wear
a lab coat, fishnets, high heels and not a lot else, by the way.)

Anyway, the responce to this posting was not encouraging. of the few people
who replied a number said that it wasn’t their thing but hoped I would have
a good time, some more merely said that they weren’t going to be around on
Friday, one said that she’d not be around but wanted to see photos of my
costume if I did.

Anyway, as no-one else wants to go and it’s probably sold out by now anyway and
I don’t have anything kinky to wear, I guess that wraps it up. I’m not going
to even bother thinking of going now. You have to be in a group to go to
one of these showings, in my opinion. It’s a sort of group humiliation fun
type thing. Going on your own dressed up is just sad and a little on the
dodgy side.

Here’s a link to the local newspaper’s web page giving details of the case I was on. They’ve spelt the name of one of the people found guilty wrong. They say it’s “Mechan” when it’s actually “Mechen.”

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!