Tuesday, March 27, 2007
January , February
This is part 2 of a 3 part blog. It continues the theme of having song titles for titles. This time its Barbara Dixon. All together now I can hear you singing along "January, February You don't understand"
Hopefully it won't be like Back to the Future 2 and be the worst of a trilogy. So here goes. Our hero starts on the first day of a new job, and completes his manual handling course. He then announces that his teeth are really hurting and might be a little bit late for his first day at work tomorrow, and then disappeared off sick for 5 days. Then back to work for a few days and followed by two and a half weeks off on jury service. I don't want to sound like a wimpy man, but it was the worse pain I have ever experienced. I sat in my living room crying having taken all of the pain relief I could have had. I can now understand why patients clock watch and badger nurses for tablets. My dentist was fantastic, but I did get a little concerned when she was looking in the digger hire section of yellow pages when she was talking about my tooth. Three treatments later, a huge filling and lots of tablets later and I am now pain free and sorted.
It is illegal to discuss what happened in the jury deliberating room, so I won't. However, I can tell you about the jury service experience. No, its not a new theme park, its a living hell....
In some ways its nice, like being retired. You get up and potter around the house and get into the court for about 10am, sit around until about 1pm reading the paper and doing sudoku, and then go for lunch. After a long lunch break, usually over an hour (I work in the public sector where any lunch break where you sit down counts as an extended one) you come back, and sit around the afternoon paper, and watch TV. At about 3pm if no one is needed you can go home, and come back into the morning. You have an expense account for travel and lunch (not a huge amount but I'm not used to any at all) and time to really do all those things you wanted to do, like look out the window, write letters, or ponder the imponderables of life, like why do I have so many odd socks.
Jury service combines the drawbacks of a trip on a budget cruise ship, with being in the Big Brother house. There was a TV in the room, but it seemed permanently tuned to talk shows, which were mostly sub standard Jerry Springer type shows where people acted out their problems in public. I stopped watching or listening after a while, but there seemed to be a lot of paternity claims, DNA testing and polyester on show.
Every so often one of the court usher comes and reads a series of names out. If your name isn't one of them you can go back to the paper, but if you are selected as part of the 15 the serious sitting around begins. The jury of 12 is selected from this randomly. I spent a lot of time on the subs bench, not being selected for the jury
The speed of justice runs slowly, at an almost glacial pace. There are delays for almost any reason, one case was delayed for over a day to try an get a video link working. Acting as a juror is one of the few times when your decisions really matter, which makes you think. It was a sobering thought holding some one's life in your hands, knowing that what you think can change this persons life forever.
I came back to work on Tuesday, and was greeted by a huge hug and a big welcome. They had really missed me and had been very short staffed due to sickness as well as my absence. As I work in a school it was only a week until half term. I worked out that I had done 9 days in my first half term. very, very different from normal.....
We went away for half term, but that is a story for another day..............
Hopefully it won't be like Back to the Future 2 and be the worst of a trilogy. So here goes. Our hero starts on the first day of a new job, and completes his manual handling course. He then announces that his teeth are really hurting and might be a little bit late for his first day at work tomorrow, and then disappeared off sick for 5 days. Then back to work for a few days and followed by two and a half weeks off on jury service. I don't want to sound like a wimpy man, but it was the worse pain I have ever experienced. I sat in my living room crying having taken all of the pain relief I could have had. I can now understand why patients clock watch and badger nurses for tablets. My dentist was fantastic, but I did get a little concerned when she was looking in the digger hire section of yellow pages when she was talking about my tooth. Three treatments later, a huge filling and lots of tablets later and I am now pain free and sorted.
It is illegal to discuss what happened in the jury deliberating room, so I won't. However, I can tell you about the jury service experience. No, its not a new theme park, its a living hell....
In some ways its nice, like being retired. You get up and potter around the house and get into the court for about 10am, sit around until about 1pm reading the paper and doing sudoku, and then go for lunch. After a long lunch break, usually over an hour (I work in the public sector where any lunch break where you sit down counts as an extended one) you come back, and sit around the afternoon paper, and watch TV. At about 3pm if no one is needed you can go home, and come back into the morning. You have an expense account for travel and lunch (not a huge amount but I'm not used to any at all) and time to really do all those things you wanted to do, like look out the window, write letters, or ponder the imponderables of life, like why do I have so many odd socks.
Jury service combines the drawbacks of a trip on a budget cruise ship, with being in the Big Brother house. There was a TV in the room, but it seemed permanently tuned to talk shows, which were mostly sub standard Jerry Springer type shows where people acted out their problems in public. I stopped watching or listening after a while, but there seemed to be a lot of paternity claims, DNA testing and polyester on show.
Every so often one of the court usher comes and reads a series of names out. If your name isn't one of them you can go back to the paper, but if you are selected as part of the 15 the serious sitting around begins. The jury of 12 is selected from this randomly. I spent a lot of time on the subs bench, not being selected for the jury
The speed of justice runs slowly, at an almost glacial pace. There are delays for almost any reason, one case was delayed for over a day to try an get a video link working. Acting as a juror is one of the few times when your decisions really matter, which makes you think. It was a sobering thought holding some one's life in your hands, knowing that what you think can change this persons life forever.
I came back to work on Tuesday, and was greeted by a huge hug and a big welcome. They had really missed me and had been very short staffed due to sickness as well as my absence. As I work in a school it was only a week until half term. I worked out that I had done 9 days in my first half term. very, very different from normal.....
We went away for half term, but that is a story for another day..............
Labels: big brother, jury service, teeth
# posted by Mark @ 1:52 PM 
