Back in the land of Reading Magistrates at 9:30am ready for my 9:30
to 9:45 meeting with the Justice of the Peace. Stood outside as the
building remains locked until 9:30. At gone 9:33 (by their own
security camera's timing) we were let in and all went swimmingly as
much as waiting for people to empty their pockets for the metal
detector can go swimmingly until I got there and my penknife was
confiscated. You can't take that in!
Felt as though it should
have been followed by But you did yesterday!
Due process by way
of form filling later my penknife disappeared into the system and I
was left with a chitty. As an aside, the security man was wearing the
regalia of some security firm on his epaulettes on his emblazoned NCP
(National Car Parks) shirt. Was that his only white shirt, does the
security company not worry about giving the impression their staff are
moonlighting like I do?
Onto the Court Office where I was promptly taken back out and
directed towards an Usher and ultimately Court 1. Sit at the back
there and you will be seen to,
was the instruction at 9:40. The
bloke from "the Electric" was next to me with a pile of warrants and
the helpful comment, They're a bit lapse, here.
The counsel for the prosecution (it transpired) and an assistant came in and the assistant bemoaned the lack of advance notice of going on a course for a very vital need and that they'd have to book her a hotel. The prosecutor nodded sympathetically as she munched through breakfast but didn't really say anything helpful. This inability to get training all sounded very familiar to corporate life elsewhere. The prosecutor went out and then two others came in and sought but did not discover the prosecutor's name not aided by the electric man's and my own poor description of her. The court emptied. The prosecutor returned. The counsel for the defence came in and expressed a few words of general recognition of the prosecutor before the prosecutor left again. The Clerk of the Court (it transpired) came in and asked after the prosecutor's name. No one knew. The prosecutor came back in and mention of a Section 23 plea was made much to the defence's outrage (the electric man explained how he had been in a couple of days before and these two had been showering each other with good Saxon terminology without a care who was listening).
It was about five past ten when the Clerk came back in and spoke
briefly to the electric man (he seemed to be universally known as the
electric man) before I was identified as someone else, had that
corrected then called up to the Clerk. He checked my documents then
bade me return to my seat at the back of the court and await his
return. He disappeared and I got quite hopeful. Then the Clerk
return and the three Magistrates followed, All rise!
was the
cry although no-one subsequently told anyone to sit. I followed the
actions of the electric man who seemed to be a regular.
The electric man was called up to the witness stand and his warrants were passed to the Clerk and then to the middle Magistrate before the electric man swore himself in. All three Magistrates listened intently (only two looked at the warrants) as the electric man declared for each warrant how he had gone round to claim the one to two hundred pounds outstanding and found no-one, had called on the disconnected phone numbers then left a 24 hour notice and now wanted permission to do something. I didn't quite catch what it was he wanted but in every case the Magistrates looked at each other and nodded that it seemed fit that the electric man should be allowed to do it. It didn't strike me that the electric man had done a great deal to deserve these warrants nor that the Magistrates made much effort to check any of the information presented to them but I was there listening to law being enacted. A privilege.
In the meanwhile the Clerk had been furiously stamping my photocopies and then signing them himself. After all that they didn't even get a Justice of the Peace to sign anything. What a swizz! Still, the Clerk dropped down to me (presumably the plebiscite is not allowed to approach the bench) and handed over my documents and bade me farewell. Which I did, wondering when the £8 per document fee was going to be demanded. It wasn't, a saving of £40. I went back to the security man who said that the reception would have my penknife who told me that the security man would have it who between them agreed that the man who did have it was the security guard who had in the meanwhile wandered off. When he returned he went over to the metal detector desk and fished it out from in front of the NCP security man.
We've had a bit of a flap on over rucksacks. The one's we decided we wanted had mysteriously vanished from the shops that once sold them and time is running out. What's worse one of the shops had dropped all rucksacks and anything remotely useful for travelling in favour of yet more so-called outdoor clothes. Still, I went into Milletts where on demand the bloke went into the stock room to discover that today's delivery had a Helen rucksack. Bought! I trundled over to the YHA shop to find that when I had been in yesterday and they said that they didn't have a rucksack for me, in fact the man picked it out of the delivery crate about an hour later. Bought!
I also bought (partly to get me over the £99 threshold that allowed me a 20% discount) a Tilley hat. An expensive affair that not only will float but will apparently survive repeatedly being eaten by an elephant. Consumer testing should be interesting.
The blood test was unremarkable other than the Sister's questioning
me over whether the doctor thought I had diabetes (how should I know
what the doctor thinks?) and that my vein went flat with only a
dribble of blood in the vial. As it happens that turned out to be
just enough but it felt a bit like having my virility questioned,
Is that it?
Erm, yes, sorry
Heaven knows how I managed
to give blood.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.