I've done it once. When they asked me to do it again I declared myself available but also included a note on the form, telling them in no uncertain terms how unutterably fucking depressing my first experience of it was. I expected no good to come of it but, hey presto, a week later, a reply telling me that I've been excused!
I jumped for fucking joy, I tell you.
It
was depressing too - an experience I never want to repeat:
- wait around for, like, days, trying to make conversation with toffee-nosed wankers who clearly long for the days when children were routinely executed for stealing chewing gum;
- file into the court and listen to hours and hours of mind-numbing testimony detailing how some sad tosser was caught stealing a bike from someone's back yard (that was one of the cases, I kid you not - in a fucking Crown Court too! What a total wate of fucking time!);
- file into the jury room and wait for all the hang-'em-and-flog-'em merchants to pass sentence. I did argue with them at first - more for the fun of it than anything else, but it quickly stopped being fun, and became something more akin to smashing your face into a block of concrete over and over again;
- file back into court and try to maintain a sense of justice served as some crusty old corpse in a silly wig predictably sentences sad tosser to 18 million years in jail;
- Go back to waiting room and start all over again with no fucking end in sight.
- Do this every day for 2 interminable weeks.
Avoid! Avoid, avoid, avoid - at all costs! Tell them you're ill! Tell them you're not who they say you are! Tell them you're a supporter of Al-Quaida and don't recognise the judicial processes of infidels! Tell them anything! Just don't do it, or you'll regret it, I promise!
Yours, still shaking, still having nightmares, still scarred by the memory...
redarmy11.