DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 9 Oct 2020

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 I handed it all in today, and well, I am as always torn between deep foreboding of being ever the jobless wonder dependent on loving men, and being joyfully secure in said dependence.

I fear, of course, the pursuit of musical accomplishment, as it has always failed me before due to severe insecurity. However, I have clearly made great strides and must continue along the good path. Enough said on that topic, for this is the diary of journalism.

I will now reflect on the job I did for such a short time and yet gleaned so much from. I see this reverence for old and experienced journalists is beyond me – N--- is certainly experienced, but still makes glaring typographic and accuracy errors on a regular basis in his copy. Is that carelessness due to old age? Perhaps he would indeed have been mellow and permissive, making the job easier than I made it in my own mind.

But the constant feeling that I am not doing the job right would have irked me constantly. This is the problem with solitary and self-motivated work. I could just choose not to run after a poor grieving mother for comment and tell the boss there had been nobody at the inquest, and maybe get away with it, but my work ethic would clash with such an approach. Meanwhile, harassing somebody who doesn’t want to end up in the papers clashes with my life ethic.  

I found myself siding with petty criminals and normal folks in so many cases, but as reporters we must always err on the side of the authority and the law. There is no such thing as calling the status quo into question. And that just proved my suspicions from the very beginning. Over and out!

DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 8 Oct 2020

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 And so, today, I quit. I called the boss and I said, you know how I was already thinking about it before, well, I have been thinking about it again, and well, I quit.

He said he would probably be able to convince me again, but it wasn’t worth the fight every fortnight. He said I might regret it in a month’s time. He said it’s what I trained for.

Thing is, music is what I trained for well before this, and it is what I keep coming back to. I think through these jobs I have been building up confidence on a world level, proving to myself that I am no worse but also no better than any other career-climbing shmuck and I should just get over myself in every which way and just pursue what is within me, which is art, which I have always felt to be art and have always repressed through pure insecurity and, paradoxically, huge ego.

So I found this week too hard. Fumbling around for a story that’s not there, twisting someone’s pain and misery into a cheap sell? and then pretending like it’s for the greater good… no… it’s not. I want to hold the powerful to account, and if that involves crawling over the squirming bodies of the poor dusty folk at the bottom, I don’t want it. Perhaps I am doing some of my own virtue signalling here, but I have sufficient confidence that this will remain for my eyes only for the rest of time.

Life is too short, and I don’t want to be looked at like a filthy bug on the bottom of people’s shoe; some ugly sight at the back of the room that nobody wants to see or hear; an intruder, a paid gossip, a hideous troll. No! I am young, beautiful and I like positive attention, is that so bad? Only one life…

I have observed the obvious flaws in the system now, as more and more lockdown-related tragedies come to light and I have begun reporting them. It’s good to see myself proven right, as to how terribly isolation takes a toll on human life and sanity, but I don’t need to be in the midst of this, so powerless and constantly infuriated. I want to be able to delete my Twitter account and see no more of it.

Today’s story was one of two gay guys who lived together – a sorry-looking landlord of about 40 and a young ruffian off the streets, his tenant. The third tenant seems just to be an innocent bystander. The two characters in this play seem to consider each other great friends, but I think it’s a real opportunistic relationship going on there. And even though the older one takes pains to affirm that there was no romantic involvement whatsoever, I’m sure there was at least infatuation on his part, or why would he do all this for the poor street rat? He takes him in to his home at intervals and puts up with his drink and drug addiction, writes him into his will. The love is deep. The street rat is a lucky little bugger. But lockdown comes and sends him rabid.

So while the older friend is all up in arms about the new rules that have just come into effect two weeks ago, the young man just wants to get off with his new boyfriend. The stickler is all uncomfortable about any outside people coming into the household, and so his little friend has to set up a distraction in order for the boyfriend to get in through the back and into his garden flat. Landlord disbelieves the foolish distraction and, annoyingly, checks his doorbell camera. 

Might I suggest that the advent of ubiquitous cameras into our lives have been a source for more harm than good? The camera proves the distraction was false, but the culprit has indeed snuck a foreign body on to the premises. 

He sends an irritating, passive aggressive message: ‘Only person I see is your boyfriend. Have him leave now, please.’ Understandably, the defendant gets irritated to fuck and smashes his phone against the wall. Somewhat more insanely, he gets a cool vintage razor out of his bedside table and heads into the house and up the stairs into the landlord and best friend’s room, says ‘I’m so sorry’, asks for a hug, then slashes the shit out of him and keeps trying to do so until the landlord grapples him down with a duvet, blood still pouring out of his throat.

All the parties involved refuse to acknowledge the sheer annoyingness of such sticklery for completely ridiculous, arbitrary rules put in place already two weeks earlier with no hint of letting up. They are all, including his defence lawyer, flouting the idea that ‘there simply couldn’t have been the slightest reason for such anger. For some reason, Mr Landlord’s text sent him into a blind rage. Well, yes. Blind it most likely was, but is it so incomprehensible that the guy can no longer bear the restrictions and needs a good shag? At least, at the very least, acknowledge that the ageing, snaggle-toothed landlord was a bit of a cowish, docile stickling motherfucker who clearly wanted to fuck the cute and vulnerable young boy he had fallen in love with. Couldn’t bear the thought of him having another man on the property, especially breaking **gasp** god forbid! The unquestionable lockdown!

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 29 Sep 2020

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 Something I’ve learned: neither politicians nor journos care about the social distancing measures they all screech to the public about day in and day out. After seeing hordes of journalists swarming round a police station blatantly undistanced and unmasked, I felt a combination of relief and frank disbelief. As they peddle these fears onto the ever-more-suspecting masses, they themselves enjoy exemption from the so-called rules. Same, we know, as those in power, who flaunt their disregard for the restrictions that they not only forcefully impose but create.

It was cute today to speak to the police officer, saying he really liked sitting in court and listening to all these well-spoken people, with his genuine smile and wry blue eyes. A loveable cop, paired with a clever prosecutor who got me to keep mum about most names in the story. To be honest, I would have done so anyway, though N--- would have squeezed it out of me.  But here I had to be firm as I had promised. It seemed truly needless to publish names of people who were victims of a crime and who might become victims of even more serious ones through publication of such information.

Also I enjoyed the Sunday outing to this odd part of Surrey that had a sort of rich gypsy vibe to it, littered with derelict buildings and strange half-houses that are probably expensive but seem shanty-like.

People with flat caps and joyful billy goats and intense black eye make-up, complaining “they’ll blame it all on the travellers, I just know it” and “an explosion!? What about the horses down there? The poor things will have been spooked to death!” - something, I won’t go into what, has put me off horse ladies. They really are slightly mad, and some horses are too fragile, overall useless creatures in our day and age.

And a completely random cozy little pub in the midst of it all, unsuspecting and quaint though not without an unfortunate modern veneer – all but inevitable with modern expectations. The Daily Mail man and I bemoaned the mask that covered the face of an adorable, keen young blonde waitress who was practically shivering with the desire to please and do well.

I suppose the Sun and the Mail aren’t really the ones peddling the fear so much, and they have been the most chilled I’ve met so far. The Sun woman actually shook my hand, which was a real joy to hold and behold. She was called Francine, too!

It is truly time I handed in my social media subscriptions and started to live in the real world. I used to, back in the pub times, now it’s just all about politics until the vomit comes out through my nose.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 24 Sep 2020

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“Every good reporter starts out at a local paper. Then you build your way up until they trust you with the big stuff.”

This is what I was told upon disclosing my qualms regarding the job. All I can hear in my mind is “careerist… careerist… careerist...” and who is meant to be trusting me, with what precisely?

It’s to avoid misinformation, I suppose. Sigh, but what if the official info is also mis-...

All we do is write down stuff the authorities tell us we can, with some wriggle space when it comes to regular folks in court and maybe kids. There is no diving deep into the system as a journalist unless you really try, and that is when shit goes down – see Assange.

At least, I think it is. I suppose that’s why I’m doing this, to see precisely to what extent the system is corrupt and phony, and to what extent my dad and Chomsky and Jimmy Dore have been correct all along.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 18 Sep 2020

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 Today the defendants that marked me most were both least and most newsworthy. 

The non-newsworthy were a couple of petty criminals who had apparently stolen someone’s wallet from his home and then gone around buying stuff with his card.
The man was a tall, hot-blooded Mediterranean creature with a long face, salt-and-pepper hair, and a black goatee. The woman was a large blonde with a messy clip holding half of it up, a mocking expression on her sour face as the bureaucrats scribbled and typed away, deciding her fate. Audible snorts and ‘pff’s came from the dock to the rhythm of my own inner sighs of exasperation. 

This judge was quite nice though, not too much gobbledegook. Always lovely, the lovely Irish. Quite red-nosed, he was too.

The petty criminal pair exchanged a passionate smooch as they were torn away from each other, the woman sent into custody and the man on bail with an express interdiction to communicate with each other – until the poor woman’s hearing in like, three months.

That broke my heart. All they did was steal someone’s wallet and use it in a Sainsbury’s.

The other one was a very cool, innocent-looking Indian fellow in a nice cotton red-gray jumper and black thick-rimmed glasses. He had beautiful, glossy black hair long enough to cover his ears and an absent yet somehow cheeky expression on his face. I heard from the local court reporter he was a regular punter in court hearings, always getting himself into trouble. This time did not disappoint.

The lawyer, sitting a mere three metres from the university student in the dock, mockingly told the prosecutor the guy’s defence story. As I looked between the lawyers and the bloke with great concern that the cap-and-robe-clad man hadn’t realised the defendant had come in, he said, “the defendant’s right behind us, but he’s off his head on drugs anyway.”

The guy didn’t seem “off his head”, maybe he’d smoked a joint or something. He seemed very much lucid enough to plead not guilty to both strange charges.

They say he tried to frighten the lights out of a pack of estate agents at their place of work by “singing his way through the door with an item with wires and duct tape, with intent to induce belief it would ignite, causing personal injury or property damage” - Because despite the immense post-lockdown backlog of cases to get through, we still have an inordinate amount of time to give to overly populating our sentences with redundant and repetitive clutter, speaking a language only we know fluently and the other peasants in the room sort of catch the gist of if they really focus.

Mr Defence stood and clarified that actually, the defendant had just shoplifted a couple aftershave bottles, nipped in to the Sainsbury’s for some free duct tape, and sauntered into the letting agency by accident. The confused property man made a mistake and panicked needlessly, probably because it would get him out of work that day, or possibly racism.

...Defence man didn’t actually say that last bit. But he did say the quiet glossy-headed man was holding his trousers up with a shoestring, that’s the “wires” bit I suppose.

It’s good, now the guy has to wait in prison until February. The real punishment is the insane waiting period for hearings and trials.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 17 Sep 2020

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 Little to report today. I have already vented my misogynistic spleen to C----- and P---- both, probably a bit too much to P----, maybe I ought not be so anti-woman, but why have I been having such terrible experiences lately? Since A-----, it has only gotten worse. She must have cursed me, must have.

I reported on a homicidal 14-year-old today. A cute little bug with a black button head looking curiously at me with his big eyes. He’d already punched and kicked a man to a heart attack and broken neck, and punctured some poor guy’s eye socket. This time he stabbed two teens, puncturing one’s lung. He needs to be a mafia hitman, he is clearly a cold-blooded killer. Although he would probably be a single-use hitman considering his terrible record of subtlety… but at his age, I am sure he will learn verrrry quickly from all the experienced guys in jail.

It’s hard to say what is the solution with people who are pathologically violent.

The dirty look that woman, apparently his very white stepmother? gave me on my way out of the court is burned into my mind. I’ve never been glared at so evilly. Hatred oozed out of her every pore. I know my profession is low. But is it that bad? Would I feel the same if a press person was at my child’s hearing? Probably. I didn’t really need to be there and intrude on their family time. I am finding it hard to imagine how I would feel, because I don’t think I know anybody who would be in such a situation that it would warrant a reporter to visit their trial or hearing. I think I would probably just ignore them. Not likely that I would read the story anyway or even think to. Also in this case, he can’t even be named, surely it is OK?, although it may now be prejudicial for him in the crown court.

I am starting to understand why the judges and lawyers adopt this confusing language. It creates a barrier between them and potentially violent families of defendants. It forces the regular folk to respect their authority, giving that authority a sort of untouchable quality. If they kind of banteringly said, I sentence you to five years behind bars mate, good luck in there, the defendant or his father might be tempted to fight back, whereas the judge can escape the room while they are still making their way through the thicket of words camouflaging the actual information.

All the criminals I’ve seen and their families rise when the judge rises with reverence. This barrier is probably what keeps that respect a-rolling.

I also heard that a judge had seen one of his harsh sentencees’ family members in a shop, who failed to recognise him for lack of a hair-cap and robes.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 16 Sep 2020

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 The more I frequent these insufferable court hearings, the more frustrated and disgusted I get by this utterly weird language which has so blatantly been put in place to separate the wheat from the, as they would have it, chaff.
 
More and more it appears to me like some cultish code the upper echelons speak in to make sure the plebes struggle to understand them. It is weird beyond belief to see some of these people, actually nice people, who work in this system, force their way into this character and then promptly fall out of it with an almost audible sigh of relief when the interaction is finished.

Because god forbid the court recording device catch you speaking like a normal person while addressing a judge, who probably can not speak in any other way at this point.

It’s things like “the personal mitigation that I rely upon is chiefly age, character and passage of time”; “his fiancee is no longer going to be his fiancee as a result of the proceedings”; “it appears that so far as the gas canister is concerned, I am asked to sentence you on the basis that that canister is there and would be used by you as directed by others”; “having regard to both the facts of the case and matters in mitigations, the starting period for the drugs case is seven years imprisonment. That will be reduced by 30 percent, blah blah blah. That might be marked by a consecutive sentence but that sentence will be reduced very significantly to allow ...”

This is, remember, a massive, life-changing, devastating moment in a man’s life and that of his family. The judge runs rings round them with supremely ugly speech that takes far too long to get anywhere. The sentencing process reminds me of Who Wants to be a Millionaire when the host purposely makes his guest sweat before they can find out whether their wild guess was correct.

I believe it is an integral part of the distinction between common people and educated elites. Problem is, these elites are in no way distinguished in cleverness. Their choice of infuriating language has no bearing on their intelligence – only that they have re-educated themselves to be what in their mind looks like “adults”, while remaining oblivious to real world that surrounds them which is positively crawling with interesting and forthright people.

Forthrightness is seen as a problem in more and more situations nowadays, I think it is precious and not something to be spat upon. While maintaining certain tact, it is so important to see past the bullshit. By god, is there a lot of it.

I am starting to learn that all these adults who intimidated me with their university studies and impossible language are no longer adults in my eyes. They are boys and girls conditioned to their status, a type of communication alien to everybody else in the world but a select few. In more familiar situations these purple speakers sometimes seem to relax though the elitist twang remains.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 10 Sep 2020

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I’m getting more confident walking in and out of court rooms – it seems to be the accepted “thing” for reporters to be roaming around. However I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I am fabricating public humiliation, or as my colleague puts it, “part of the justice system!”.

(Huh. I just realised, it is hilarious, because she reminded me of Julia Louis-Dreyfus or possibly even Elaine when we first met. She puts exclamation points at the end of almost every sentence!)

She was referring to journalists and journalism, but I don’t think that’s right. I think we should be questioning the system itself and not the poor sods caught up in its web of bureaucracy.

My thoughts about the system today were that, damn, it’s hard to get someone behind bars. A guy caught with 5,000 child porn images was sentenced to 25 days of porn training, a symbolic sentence he will never serve, and… that’s it. I guess the public humiliation sort of polishes off his punishment.

The poor sod who just accidentally broke someone’s nose two years ago and now might suffer in his hairdressing practice, that one was unnecessary, but to be fair any reasonable person would understand it wasn’t such a big deal. Though I guess everyone will know about his testicle cancer now – I didn’t mention the one that was removed, out of consideration.

No, what disturbed me today was the sheer amount of nonsense that gets in the way of these trials. Every single one of them was delayed by at least two years. This is two years of mental agony, uncertainty of what might happen once their case is finally opened. Living in fear for years until the incident they were charged with is nothing but a speck in their past life and they have morphed into somebody new… but the beast of bureaucracy, some may call it justice, comes back to bite them, and bite them on the arse followed by the gentle caress of public humiliation.

Like with a dog, you do not rub its nose in its mess after the event – you catch it in the act and punish it right then and there, or it forgets and thinks you have gone mad, you are unpredictable and cruel. Though we humans may have a slightly longer memory span, it surely does not last two, three years. We are keen to disbelieve those defendants who say “I can’t remember”, but can we remember the precise facts of an event or a conversation two years prior?

No, it’s all very convoluted and ugly. I must learn the tools of the trade, learn to talk and act like a reporter, then move the f*** on. Pronto. Callousness can come, but it must come for the right people – not these poor, poor sods.

Saw half a fox today on the M4.

I listened to more government propaganda on the radio despite my promise to self not to do so. It can really wreck my mood for a few hours. I know I should let things wash over me like George Michael’s voice, but this paranoia is getting out of hand. I didn’t wear a mask in the Lidl today, and nearly charmed the mask off the clerk at the till at the end with my klutzy ways. How tragic to see only ¼ of everybody’s faces. I have decided that if confronted, I will say in my innocent manner, “I just think it’s all a bit creepy,” and hope for the best! 

The truth of course would be that it makes my stomach churn to see all these people so readily submit to “government guidelines”… that reduce their social interaction to near-zero… taking for granted the preciousness of our interactions with one another, even if they are from afar. And that, only if the person is elderly or likely to come in contact with an elderly person. On an individual basis, I am happy to make an effort, always. On a mass authoritarian level, no, never. It is messy, meaningless, ugly and overbearing.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 9 Sep 2020

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Today I witnessed an inquest where the cause of death was so lazy the woman basically said it was made up. No one cares, because the guy was a drug addict, as she repeatedly said during her speech. His family did not assist. He died of mysterious causes, found partly decomposed in his flat with a syringe next to his body but no substances either on the syringe or in his body, apart from cannabis. So, of course, the toxicologist made up some nonsense about cannabis-induced cardiac arrhythmia. 

“This case has caused me great difficulties. When you have a suicide, you normally have an intent and an act. Here, we had the intent, but there was no act.”

He apparently left a note saying he was going to god, and his time on earth was up. He was of Arabic descent, but had changed his name to TJ Fuller when he was 16, he was “embarrassed by his name”.

He had started getting different opinions about everything in the past six months, neglecting his friends and was not getting on with people.

The note mentioned “Mr Fuller, the end.” “Ready to die.”

She would not read all of it – out of courtesy.

The case presented great difficulties… a headache, for a clearly unimportant bloke, the way she talked about him, it was callous. It is obvious that if you deal with death on a daily basis, and literally a daily basis, as a coroner, that you will not be particularly moved by anybody’s death. So I don’t take it as an offence against this poor sod that she didn’t give the shadow of a damn.

The real offence lies with the police, the toxicologist, the investigators, and family. The guy was so insignificant that they slapped the laziest possible label on his “partially decomposed” body and got on with it.  (Funny how unknowingly accurate I was in my story of Willy Wurton, huh?)

Clearly, had it been a less drug-addicted, more wealthy man, more people may have perked up at the mysterious circumstances around his death. Here, they were more than eager to consider it drug-related – even if it provably was not. They just did not want to take the extra time. The eyeroll as she described the great difficulties of this case was telling enough.

Thing is, I probably wouldn’t care for the guy either. It is, however, more proof of the shamlike nature of the system itself. The phony bureaucracy which slows everything down and covers it in a veil of acceptability. The truth is we don’t care about all deaths, not everybody is equal, and all the functionaries know it, journalists know it, god knows drug addicts and lower classes know it. I just wish that callousness were not sugar coated in time-wasting exercises for the sake of… of what? Keeping the system going, I suppose. Sigh. Otherwise we might descend into savagery, or would we?

Thought: if an “expert” or doc is “discredited”, what does that mean? By whom?

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 8 Sep 2020

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 The sight of roadkill is surprisingly shocking to me. I see these slaughtered creatures, so flattened they are like a detailed painting, in droves each day. In fact the different species whose insides I get the privilege of witnessing on crude display seem to be on the rise. It started with what I think was just a fox last Tuesday and has now, on my sixth day on the job, grown to foxes, badgers, rabbits, a fawn, pigeons, and squirrels.

Possibly the worst one was the rabbit stretched across a solid metre of road, something like a 2D model of the rodent’s intestinal tract.

That is a close tie with the solitary squirrel tail blowing in the wind through the middle of the road.

In other news, I have now observed practices in three different courts. The barristers and clerk in Oxford were having a jolly old time joking between cases, it actually made me kind of maybe want to work in the field. They seem like a solid bunch of smarty pants with a gift for the gab and close interactions with the opposite end of the systemic spectrum. This is a highly interesting domain. I don’t think their laughter and joking was callous, but rather similar to that of a doctor or a nurse. 

They are confronted every day with matters of life and death and, on top of that, humiliation – possibly worse than death? – so they are probably most likely candidates for both empathy and humour. The former is debatable, you might say. I would say that without it, the latter is impossible. So a barrister without a sense of humour is more likely to be callous, uncaring and careerist.
I leave this open to further contemplation. “Sense of humour” itself is an extremely debatable term, because what of the Wall Street lads laughing in the back of a limo caught in a rain of dollar bills, champagne and prostitutes? They probably know a good joke or two as well.

And what of the serious defence lawyer lady working for the accused in the position-of-trust case?

In all her demanding, diabetic glory, she seems a right drag to be around. But her unbelievable persistence in getting what she wants seems, for now, a priceless skill for her job of defending the (potentially) undefendable. Let’s see how the verdict turns out. My point being, the haughty serious types may not be full of humour, or even empathy (who knows what goes on in there), but their commitment to a job immaculately done is a rare and impressive quality indeed. It may portray more integrity than some of the jesters.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 3 Sep 2020

My impressions so far.
In my very first week as an observer of the sleaziest parts of everyday modern life, I fell into a court case that happened to make papers all over the world.

Looking over running tables for local courts, I found at least fifteen other cases that stuck out to me as far, far uglier and more shocking. But this was the one that made the cut, because it tickles people’s gossip bones. Everybody is a village numpty more or less deep down.

It’s the case of a woman teacher who, apparently, laid one of her form pupils when he was just turning 16. Putting the legal age of consent aside, the kid was clearly of sound mind when it happened and is not particularly traumatised by the experience which was probably deeply pleasurable for him. I mean, which teenage boy gets to sleep with an experienced 33 year old on the reg? The thrill must have been awesome. For me, just thinking of the day-to-day excitement gives me the chills.

Of course, when you are trying to study and you are infatuated with someone inaccessible whom you happen to have to see every day, that can be a real unhealthy distraction. I recall even at 19, when 33- or 34-year-old T----- would fuck me majestically and then tell me to keep it under wraps and cruelly leave without a kind word, it smarted a little bit. But it toughened me up, wasn’t such a big deal in the grand scheme of life – in fact, some of those memories with him are invaluable to me.

But anyway, this one is quite a bit different. The kid was sixteen and in her class.

I do not get why they make the poor kids say in excruciating detail exactly what they mean by things like “anal” (what do you mean by anal? he put his willy in her bum) and “fingering” (put his fingers inside her. Inside her what? Her vagina). When did children get so adept at sex talk? What are we growing into, as a species? Is it good, maybe? Maybe we were meant to start sex early, considering our age of biological maturity.

Standing outside the court room with the woman a few feet away from me, knowing she knows I’m writing the next salacious story about her that’s going to be the gossip of all the land, was deeply awkward. She behaved very coolly, I must say. Maybe her sharp solicitor has been keeping her spirits up.

The solicitor, phew, there’s a doozy. A heavy woman with nearly thirty years experience, she picks up every tiny detail and turns anybody into a pathological liar if she wants to. I would not want her on my case, though that third boy witness was quite snarky and managed to throw her a little. Her demands for comforts and covid-related hygiene were obnoxious as hell, but I think it’s all a part of the imposing and self-important character.

“I suggest that you lied. I suggest you never slept with her at all.”

Very damning, very cruel to a teenage boy, though they too are notorious for being cruel…

My god, what to think? Whom to believe? It’s like watching a play, only real… With the main character, the centre of all attention, sitting quietly at the back in a glass box, ignored yet intricately scrutinised all at once.

The bumbling prosecutor, chatty and a bit amused by the whole situation, a bit too easygoing. He stumbled over his words I think, one too many times. Eh, why not. He is benevolent.

The chipmunk-faced judge, adorable and formidable. He doesn’t take any nonsense. He has to keep things running to schedule, but he also has to ensure a fair trial. He will pipe in politely – and my god, how polite they are, when they interrupt each other, sometimes I feel Ms Defence Lawyer is on the verge of cursing somebody out but she keeps ultimate respect and calm with the judge no matter what – to clarify anything he did not understand, even if it is basic, just for the jury’s sake. That is what he is for! To make sure the jury understand all in a clean, honest manner.

I befriended the covid cleaner, a nice man from Pakistan who brought me a slice of pizza when I was so hungry. He then became a bit too clingy, saying he’d seen me in a dream and wanted to keep serving me things. Why must my kindness be so gravely misinterpreted? The elite tend to ignore the cleaners, and I treat them just like anybody else. So they like me. Just like children.

...Is that such a demeaning thing to say, when I am the only one actually talking to them and looking them in the eye? Well, it could be argued that I am the one being a phony in this case. But my original perspective honestly was that he was a regular Joe just like any of the big-shot lawyers. It is once I gleaned his pathetic nature that I changed my mind and realised that his attention towards me had indeed been similar to that of a child. So I maintain my high esteem of my own virtue: it is he who proved my good faith in him wrong.

Regardless of such exceptions, I do find janitors and other workers interesting, as they have a very different perspective on things that are happening around us. This cleaner says he delivered food to the now-famous defendant, who lives in the town nearby. A knowing smile suggested that he might have some insight into her character. He can hear the cases from his janitor’s closet, I think I understood him saying. I bet nobody would ever suspect him of anything if he did ever listen in…

Note to self: think about chatting to workers about important people.

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