www.peterhartmilitary.com Jury Duty is our obligation as members of society. Twelve just men/women combining their life experiences to come to a fair and binding judgement directed by a pillar of authority and rectitude - an old bloke dressed in drag with a wig. Of course that doesn’t apply to me: I’m far too busy interviewing veterans, writing fab history books and taking the army to far off Gallipoli to drink EFES and raki. Well I soon found out that, as far as the court summoning service, were concerned it did mean me. Although I was allowed a postponement from October 2007, my excuses were brushed aside and I could only bring the jury service forward - no more postponements.I was seething with frustration and rage - couldn’t somebody else do it - I’m busy!So I decided to turn up in such a disreputable state that I would be excused as manifestly unsuitable. I had allowed my hair to grow so that I looked like a mad professor, Max Wall or Coco the Clown depending on your viewpoint. I didn’t shave! I got out my filthy dirty ripped denims, a Drive by Truckers T-Shirt and examined the effect - perfect. I’d be home by lunchtime.My Polly had a different take on what would happen. She said I would turn up, sulk like a child for the first few days, gradually get friendly with the people around me, get called for a case, get interested, start wearing my normal clothes and be a fully committed jury member within a week. How little she knows me even after all these years of domestic bliss!What really happened was this. I turned up 30 minutes late, was rude to the security people on the door who searched us, playing my I-Pod, refused to fill out any documentation, threw my attendance sheet away, refused to claim food allowance/expenses, ignored the briefing by a pompous dwarf brassy woman with dyed blond hair and refused to watch the briefing video.I told the brassy woman that I had regular migraines: she ignored me! Well I do - they are regular - one a year!I sat on my own, I-Pod playing, working on some cataloguing and reading the Guardian. I snapped at an old Labour Party comrade who tried to speak to me, I refused to eat anything and for some reason became increasingly irritable as the long day wore on. I wasn’t called, and - Jesus wept on a bicycle! - some people were being considered for an 8 week case. Well not me - ha - my cunning plans were working a treat!The second day, same clothes, but as I sat down I got talking to a nice barrister who had been called up and was in danger of being put on the long case. Sympathised as penury loomed for her and her one woman law firm! Noticed that we seemed to be on an all Guardian reading table and two of the chaps and chappesses worked for the Labour Party - we all got talking some how. I still wasn’t called and we were allowed to go at lunch time - hooray it was working!Third day, same clothes, tee hee - I’d show them what the word uncooperative meant. Spent a reasonably pleasant day chatting, reading and cataloguing. We were allowed home early but warned that we were now selected for a jury for Thursday.Thursday dawned, New T-Shirt - a Ba-Lamb number! I was absolutely confident that the judge would take one look at me and I would be kicked out. No! Not a blink! Oh god it was a serious assault case! Quite interesting and oooh look the first prosecution witness was clearly lying! Drew a diagram so that I could follow the exact sequence and location of events! Mind you the defence lawyer kept sniffing in the classic manner of coke snorting solicitors the world over! Naughty boy!Friday. Well I wanted to be taken seriously by my fellow jurors so I wore my usual work clothes - to be honest I was still pretty scruffy but not now by design! Case really interesting! My jurors were a mixed lot but we seemed to be rubbing along all right.Monday: the verdict - unanimous not guilty and the initial doubters were motivated by the ‘no smoke without fire’ instinct. Watched the accused in the dock - would he laugh thus undermining my faith in human nature. No he cried real tears of relief and brokenly thanked the jury - I felt great that I’d played my part…And that was that. We had to call in the next day but we were all released from jury duty that the Tuesday so it was back to work for me on Wednesday!Quite an interesting experience, in parts at least. Perhaps I was wrong to behave like an infantile child at the start. I wonder if I can still claim expenses!Will I learn from this - shouldn’t think so - I am 53!Pete
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www.peterhartmilitary.com Well fresh from an unwise consumption of assorted pints of foaming ale and bubbly cider on Saturday night I can assure you they do. The carefree cheeriness with which I accepted my seventh pint; that feeling of joie de vivre, that everything was right in the world has been replaced by a dull ache. For five days I had not drunk anything alcoholic: my mind was racing streets ahead, every neuron springing to work with a metaphorical spring in their steps. I was able to bash off an article for the Australian War Memorial in a matter of hours, I could intervene in complex family quarrels between my four and eight year old daughters without making the situation worse and I could accept the deep trauma of Liverpool’s humiliating defeat by the mighty Barnsley without too much collateral damage to my nearest and dearest.After my night of revelry, when I got back home I found the ‘pillows of doom’ outside the bedroom door! It seemed it was to be the attic and the cold comfort of my library for me. Yet even then I had the residual brainpower to drink a couple of glasses of water and soluble aspirin! I even realised that Polly was fast asleep and would never notice me sneaking into the matrimonial bed. I’d still got it! I was unaffected by booze. A new life of carefree debauchery lay before me…But come the dawn, all is dull as if a strange cloudy cloud has descended on me like the blanketing fog over the British lines on 21 March 1918. I have an ache at both the front and back of the head, disrupted eyesight, a slight feeling of nausea and everyone I know is a bloody nuisance. I still have to check and send off the article written yesterday and I can barely read it, never mind focus on any finely honed arguments. Thank the Holy Sausage that looks down on us all that I didn’t have the eighth pint is all I can think! Urrrggggghhhhh!Peter Hart Sunday 17 February
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