Brush With the Law

This morning I took the bus to Kingston Magistrates' Court to get a Statutory Declaration signed. The inter-web informed me that this could be done quite easily; all you have to do is arrive at 9.00AM, and the magistrate signs it for you before court goes into session at 10.00AM. Easy.

I sat in the waiting room for what seemed like an age before I was finally called, just a few minutes before 10, by a white-haired, black-robed gentleman who beckoned me into his office. Or so it seemed.

The man, whom I thought was a magistrate, turned out to be an over-dressed usher. The room he led me into, which I assumed was his office, turned out to be a courtroom; a horrible, orange wood-panelled, Judge Judy-esque courtroom. This was not what I had envisaged.

My usher friend asked me to sit in the witness box. OK, I said. No sooner had I done this than he asked me to stand up. Three magistrates had entered the room and seated themselves at the top of a three-tiered platform in front of me. Oddly intimidating.

I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that I was yet to shower that day, and was dressed somewhat like a teenage stoner. They discussed the matter that I brought before the court. I soon got the sense that everyone in the room, myself included, was wondering what on earth I was doing there.

I just wanted a Justice of the Peace to sign a Stat Dec. for me. A simple, one-page Stat Dec. And this? Perhaps I should have gone to a small-time solicitor. Maybe this was an overkill. In any case, it spelled death for my implicit trust in Yahoo! Answers.

They got me to read my declaration aloud to the court. I think they were trying to teach me a lesson by going through all the motions. To them I was like somebody who had brought a bazooka on their first pheasant-hunt. "Go on, shoot the pheasant with your bazooka. Do it ... do, it".

So I did it. I read that declaration in the loudest, most articulate voice I had. I could feel they were expecting me to stumble on words like "conscientiously" and "incidental", positioned, as they were, so closely together, but I just powered on through like I ate those words for breakfast. Stoner indeed! Take that magistrates! I could see they were impressed. One of them even said thank you at the end, but that was because I had stayed standing in the box too long, and they wanted me to leave.

Lesson learned.

This is Definitely the Hardest I've Ever Hit My Head

One day, when I was in year 8, I came home from school and told Mum that I had been knocked unconscious - albeit only briefly - after falling backwards from an undisclosed height.

This was a lie.

It was true that I had hit my head (and hit it quite hard) after falling backwards, but unconscious? No. It just felt like a much snappier lead sentence for the story. Mum did what all good mothers should - she didn't ask probing questions, but only expressed the deepest concern. And life went on very nicely for some time.

16 years later, the Universe saw fit to pay me back for this dishonesty. Unfortunately for me, the punishment came in the form of yet another blow to the head. (Why so many blows to the head?)

See, I was walking up the stairs in the Subway at Greenwich, after having just purchased a delicious Jamaican-themed sub from a Polish sandwich artist. For some reason I was feeling a strong sense goodwill toward all men, so when I saw a group of people descending the narrow stairway I stood to one side and let them pass; they obliged with a smile and a thank you.

Now, armed with that springy step which often accompanies such self-congratulatory courtesies, I bounded up the stairs. If I could, in retrospect, choose a different verb with which to climb the stairs, I would probably choose 'meander', or 'float'. But I did neither - I bounded. And I hit my so hard on something I don't even know the name of. It was definitely a piece of building, and it was definitely jutting out above the stairs in a dangerous way. It just adds insult to injury that I can't even name the perpetrator.

Needless to say, I bled for some time, and felt quite shook up - and then drowsy for some time after that. Almost as if I had been mildly concussed.

Touché Universe, touché.

Blackberry Pie

On Friday night we joined up with Mum and Dad in Moret-Sur-Loing, a small town south of Paris, for some canal boat action. Mum and Dad have been staying on Graham and Iris' (long-time friends) canal boat, 'The Manatee'.

The boat was surprisingly spacious and homey inside, and it was very relaxing cruising down the canals and through the locks. On our second evening we moored along a toe-path that was lined with blackberry bushes.


Bruised, prickled, and poisoned with thorns and nettles, we all persisted in getting the most out of the blackberry crop.


Julian took a different, slightly more sneaky approach to the blackberry picking.


His enjoyment continued when Iris cooked up some of the blackberries into a delicious pie. Fortunately there were still enough berries left over the following day to make several pots of jam (unfortunately the jam ended up spilling over Julian's clothes on the way home).