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.