Second Interview

Well, for a first day back in the office, today was remarkably smooth and stress-free: No major crises had been building while I’d been away. Everything had ticked along as planned, so I happily dealt with what email there was and quietly thanked the gods of IT for not spoiling my holiday with a hard landing.

The major event of today was actually my second interview for the Magistracy. You may recall I felt I did fairly well at the first interview. However, I don’t have a good feel for how today went, other than that it was a stimulating hour which really made me think. I won’t know whether I passed or not until late June at the earliest when the names of the short-listed candidates go to the Lord Chancellor for approval.

Whereas the first interview was fairly standard Human Resources fare, today I was given some scenarios to consider, decide on and then discuss with the panel of three serving magistrates. The sample scenarios were apparently confidential, so I won’t discuss them in detail (Which would probably be long and tedious in any case.)

There were basically two tasks; the first was to rank the four offences from a list of seven brief descriptions that I viewed as ‘most serious’ and then to justify my decisions in the face of questioning from the panel. The second task was a more detailed scenario, roughly approximating (I assume) a police report of a crime and the pre-sentence report on the defendant. This involved some role-play as I and two of the panel, took on the role of the Bench deciding the sentence to be passed. It took a while but I eventually fumbled my way through the points and options expressed by my ‘colleagues’ to decide what I believe was a just sentence.

While they pointed out that there were no right or wrong answers to the scenarios we were discussing, that just made me more conscious of how inarticulate and meandering I had been during the process of deciding the answer (which is what I expect they were judging me on) – and also how amorphous a lot of my views really are on the nitty-gritty of crime and punishment. If they want a wishy-washy liberal-minded do-gooder on the Bench this time next year, then it seems I am their man!

Well, however I performed, it is done now. I can do nothing but wait to get the letter.

Chorus rehearsal this evening went well. I caught up with a couple of the guys I haven’t seen in a while. Afterwards, Brett needed to have chats with some of the Music Team and the Steering Committee, so we ended up going to the pub for a drink where I did more socialising: All very pleasant.

Brett is off to Sweden for four days again tomorrow, so he is still pottering around, packing and sorting stuff out… doesn’t look like an early night.