Civic Duty
11 February

Well, I've just spent a fortnight doing my civic duty on jury service at Liverpool Crown Court.

I only saw one trial through to completion - I got through into one panel but was one of the three not chosen and I got into one other jury but the accused changed his plea overnight to guilty.

The trial that I did sit on, however, made up for the lack of other involvement as it dealt with a case of two young women accusing a much older man of improper behaviour. This was not pleasant. Eventually, the jury was hung at 8 not guilty and 4 guilty. This was probably the best result. It told the two girls that they were believed. It told the man that his defence of being an eccentric huggy person was not credible. But we didn't place the man on the sex offenders register which was also probably right on the basis of the evidence to hand.

I can't say that it was a wholly edifying experience and the circumstances in which the juries wait and deliberate are debilitating. But there, it's done. One guilty and one hung jury.

One thing I did was to read and read and read. It was the easiest way to pass the time. I polished off Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl. I'd never read anything by her before and I really enjoyed the novel. Set against the background of Anne Boleyn's rise and fall from grace, they story is told from within the Boleyn camp. The main character is Mary, Anne's younger sister, who is Henry's lover before Anne gets a shot at the crown. What sets this apart from most historical novels is not the accuracy of the period setting but the sense of future history (which is well known to the reader) being unknown to the characters. There is a real sense of there being everything to play for. I was gripped throughout.

I also tackled Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels. It's not a long book but it has certainly my understanding of the development of the early Christian church. We're so used to the edifice of Christendom being as it is that it takes a book like this to make you realise that it didn't have to have been that way.

The Gnostics were in many respects like Quakers in their outlook; they looked for a direct approach to God, they saw that there was much wisdom in other routes to God and in other religions and philosophies, they embraced the role of women within the church and they eschewed the pyramidal hierarchy of the Pauline church with its bishops as head of the local satrap. I was stimulated and gripped throughout.

And then, finally, it was back to fiction with Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. I picked this up because one of the other juror's had been reading it and he had picked it up because he'd seen it on Richard and Judy. If I'd just heard about the TV connection, I should probably have disdained it and I should have missed something special.

Set in Barcelona, mainly in the 1950s, the story is about a young man's attempt to find out about a mysterious and little known writer. But it's also an exploration how people get to grips with life after a Civil War and during a dictatorship. And it's also an exploration of memory and the past and how we come to terms with the past. And it's like a creepy Anne Rice novel without the supernatural and much, much better written.

I seem to be being particularly lavish with my five stars this year having already doled them out to both Bad Education and House of Flying Daggers but I can't not see a way to give this novel five stars also.

I also broke the fortnight up with yoga and a reiki session with Janet. I think that I am due for a break from reiki. Not that I am out of sorts with it or that I need to move away from Janet. But I need some time to settle before I renew the journey.

And Ross and I took a turn round the Walker Art Gallery of Sunday morning to visit Past Modern - an exhibition of work by the The Singh Twins. I loved the intricacy and vibrant colour of this exhibition drawing its inspiration, as it does, from the tradition of Indian miniatures and then linking the craft to contemporary situations and mores. You get and idea from All Hands On Deck which displays a modern, real family scene in a traditional manner. However, it was a bit like gorging on chocolate and, after a while, I could eat no more.