Despite everything that you may have heard (or read) to the contrary, I am a good, law abiding Australian citizen. Proof of this arrived this month in the form of a summons to perform Jury Service.
Now, obviously I can tell you very little about the actual case as that would be against the law. What I can tell you is that it was a complete waste of time and money.
You see, after being told how extremely serious the proceedings were by an extremely serious man in a seriously extreme wig, and how much each day in court costs ($160,000 according to the same seriously extreme wig), the proceedings all fell apart and the Jury were discharged just four days into a six week trial.
So, what failure of evidence caused $640,000 to be pissed up against the wall?
Dodgy air-conditioning.
You see on day one we, The Jury, were forced to sit in our 4m x 10m Jury room with no windows and very little in the way of ventilation. After five hours, one of the jurors started having breathing difficulties and had to be looked after by the court attendants.
We were duly sent away for two days as it transpired that the men in silly wigs couldn’t agree on anything.
When we came back the extremely serious man in the seriously extreme wig informed us that there was an expectation that for much of the next six weeks (and possibly beyond) we would be staying in that Jury Room rather than being in court hearing actual evidence. That, combined with the sudden realisation that a lack of oxygen can be detrimental to a person’s health, meant we were to be discharged and a new Jury empanelled once they could get their shit together. And once they could find a Jury that don’t need oxygen to survive.
All for the want of someone spending a couple of grand fixing the air-con.
Greig & I celebrate AJ's 30th with Sam & Leon.
Your hard-earned tax dollars at work.
Anyway, on to more fun things.
A.J. turned 30 and threw a bit of a shindig at the Burdekin Hotel. It was a “Thirties” theme so everyone dressed up as hookers and gangsters and the such. I think A.J. dressed up as them all.
Greig and I were a little late (and a little under-dressed) as we had been at Katrina’s 40th birthday dinner at the salubrious Freeway Hotel in Artarmon.
Deb also had a small birthday BBQ at her home. This was the first time that she’d had the opportunity to have a party there and she wasn’t about to let the chance slip by.
A country BBQ. Greig's Dad toasts his Mum's 70th.
The 2011 "Just Say No" Launch Event.
Continuing the birthday theme, if you combined A.J. and Katrina’s birthdays together you’d end up with Greig’s Mum’s birthday. No, I don’t mean a bunch of queens dressed as Great Depression Sex Workers ordering chicken schnitzel and chips at the bar – I mean 70.
Greig’s Mum turned the big seven-oh so the whole family hit the road and helped her celebrate by arriving en-mass at her home in Wellington demanding to be fed.
We made a long weekend of it so we could spend more time with the family and (shudder) the kids. All in all we seems to have survived but I think Greig suffered a few bruises.
Another regular October event was Ma’s Spring BBQ (and “Just Say No” Launch Event) at his home in Newtown. That’s always a great opportunity to catch up with Mark and various other friends and remind them of why they shouldn’t enter a Mardi Gras Float next year.
This year as part of my “Just Say No” campaign, I made fridge magnets and stuck them to every metal surface I could find in Mark’s house.
And the final mention this month is for an event that was just for us.
Greig and I celebrated our 25th year of being us by holding a very civilised dinner at Linda’s in Newtown, just for us and forty of our closest “A-List” friends.
Linda’s actually did a fantastic job at catering an excellent three course meal for us. How she managed, I’ll never understand. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food immensely. They also enjoyed the Champagne immensely, as was evident by the number of messages we received the following morning by members of the A-List complaining of very sore heads.
Brilliant value, I thought.