So, yesterday saw me back at work for the first time since April 20th. The reasoning for this, was, of course, Jury Duty. One of the most boring, yet strangely exciting things I will probably ever have to do as a citizen of our great nation. I’m not going to go into all of that British / English bollocks, because life’s too short, and so was Jury duty.

I’ll write this as a bit of a guide to jury duty. Things may be different in each court, these are my own experiences.

It all started on a cold April morning. I seem to remember it was a bit of a cloudy morning. I boarded the bus, and bought a return ticket… a snip at £4.40. Thanks to my test run several weeks earlier, I knew exactly how long it would take, which meant that I was able to judge which bus I was going to get. This is something important, naturally.

I arrive at the court, and enter through two large doors. The first thing that greets you is a metal detector. You empty everything out of your pockets, and walk through. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t beep. If it does, the security guard stops you, then frisks you up and down with… er, one of those things that whistle.

Anyway, the first job you do is “report”. You, and all the other jurors get shoved into a room, before eventually queuing to get your papers and ID examined. Thankfully, I haven’t changed much since my passport photo, so I was OK.

You then get shown the canteen. This is your two-week prison, but you don’t have time to reflect on that, as you’re then shown a court room, and a short tape of what you’ll be doing as a juror. Riveting stuff.

It’s then off to the canteen again, in order to be issued a passcard. This is also your meal ticket. You get a daily allowance of £5.27, at the time of typing. Great, I thought. I’ll be able to get something to eat. Sooo, I got a sausage roll and a bottle of Sprite. I think it came to £2.85. Glad I wasn’t paying, but it shows your card doesn’t go far. It was 85p for a can of coke from a vending machine. You actually had to PAY for those.

Next comes the waiting. You sit there, along with 100-150 other people, and wait. And wait. You can do nothing, really. Most people took along a magazine, or a book.

I didn’t. I thought that I’d be too busy, after all, it was our first day.

An hour later, I was almost peeling off the vaneer from the tabletops. I’d already completed the daft little golf game my phone has, along with counting the ceiling tiles, and studying in great detail the rather interesting clump of ear hair the woman next to me had.

All of a sudden, the tannoy clicked into life. “Right, we need a jury for court number [whatever]… can the following people meet Fred at the door…

15 names are called. Part of me wanted my name to come out, to get it over and done with… it didn’t. Sigh. This happened twice, so there were considerably less people in by the time lunchtime came.

I didn’t bother going to the canteen for my din-dins. Instead, I walked the lonely streets of the town, looking for a Greggs. This wasn’t hard, as there were approximately 10 of them in a short walk from the court buildings.

I decided that if I was going to be stuck in there, it would be a good idea to get some reading material, so I hopped along to WH Smiths, and bought a copy of Micro Mart. It’s £2 now!! This was the 1000th issue too. Er, not that it matters.

So, after two successful purchases, off I went back to the court. As I passed through the metal detector, I forgot I’d left my keys in my pocket. My word, the thing lit up like Blackpool. I thought I’d started world war three. There was then the afternoon session. At least this time I had something to read.

After an hour, the tannoy went again… another 15 jurors, and I was one of them. How very awesome. The next step, after waiting around for what seemed like another age, was to be picked again. the 15 have to be whittled down to 12. The names are printed off onto cards, and then hand-picked. You then have to call out when your names are called, and then take a seat on the jurors bench. You are then sworn in… you read a card, while holding the bible, or religious text of choice. The case then begins.

I’m not going to post any details of the trials (that’s just my personal choice, the cases are over and done with now, and it is a public court), so you’ll just have to use your imagination on this one.

The first case went on far too long, but at least I had an idea of what was going on, therefore, when I got called for my second case a few days later, I was ready for it, and knew what to expect. On the second case, it turned out that I was sat next to the guy who comes into Employment Palace every few days, and fills up the sarnie machine. Small world, eh?

Throughout the days, there was far too much waiting around. The bus home only came once every half hour, so as luck would have it, I would get to the bus station, only to find that the bus left 3 minutes ago. This means that, not only would I be waiting around for 27 minutes, the view was less than inspiring….

I spent far too long examining that welding work.

So, although I was waiting around a lot, it was over all too quickly, and within a few days, I was back at Employment Palace, wanting to stick sharp objects into my face.

Technorati Tags: boring, bus ride, jury, railings

The humble drain cover. A large slab of perforated metal, whose sole purpose is to rid our pot-holed streets of rainwater, syringes, condoms and car keys, yet still keeping important objects such as feet and ankles from plunging into the sewerage system.

Chad, who you may remember, enjoys leaving comments on this very website under the name of Vince, left another one, stating his disinterest in the subject of streetlighting. Aw, shame. His closing statement was that “[he] must go and start taking pictures of drain covers and roadsigns”. Suddenly, I remembered. Both of my brain cells lit up like Blackpool Illuminations.

N Downing And Sons, the company who made that very drain cover, were based in Railway Street, Stockton-On-Tees, and formed in 1880 when the owner, Mr. Nicholas Downing, dissolved his partnership with Mr John Matthew Henderson. It closed 100 years later in the early 1980s. The last family owner, Dave Downing, is now living in South Africa.

You might be wondering how I had an image of a drain cover to hand so readily. Back in August, I was outside Mercuryvapour Towers, waiting for Big Phil to pick me up and take me to Rievaulx Abbey. Unfortunately, he was running late, so I had a bit of time to wait. While I was waiting, I thought I’d test the camera, just to make sure it was working. I looked down at my feet, and noticed the drain cover below. I took the photo, and was happy in the knowledge that the camera was working perfectly. However, instead of deleting this image, I kept it on the camera

After returning home, I downloaded all of the images from the camera, and came across that one. Again, I didn’t delete it. Instead, I filed it away, in the hope that somewhere down the line, I would be able to blog about it. I have done that now.

Technorati Tags: boring, chad phillips, drain, n downing, stockton

It’s just coming up to 11AM, and Daddykins isn’t even up yet, so the chances of actually doing anything decent today are becoming weaker and weaker. Something I forgot to mention in the earlier post, so might as well mention now is that yesterday, we bought something else from Euro Trade…

For the last few months our toilet has had a crusty brown rim, made of limescale. And we’d tried everything to get rid of it. Except limescale remover, naturally.

While in ETW, I spied some Toilet Duck limescale remover… 2 for £1. It wasn’t until we got it home, we found that it was actually industrail strength stuff, with “Only to be used by professionals” plastered all over the bottle. Um. How hard could it be to use Toilet Duck for christ’s sake? Answer: not very hard at all. The limescale remover did indeed do the job of… um… removing the limescale, and now our shitpot is lily white. And so is the area of the blue bath mat where I spilled a little of it. Whoops.

Technorati Tags: boring