Funny old day

Today has been one of the worst, and also one of the best days (well not quite one of the best, but you get the idea!)

I spent the morning sitting in on the Judge's summing up of a rape trial against one of our clients from work. A colleague has been sitting in, and supporting the client and her mum for the past two days, but couldn't attend today so myself and a different colleague went instead. It's been a difficult week really, not least to sit in the public gallery and learn that he his previous 3 accusations and trials of the exact same offence against 3 other women, which is information ruled to not be appropriate to share with the jury. The trial has been extremely difficult for her, as any rape trial is, and of course compounded by the fact she is a street sex worker especially trying. That said, for once, at least, it was investigated and prosecuted thoroughly and she didnt get too hard a time of it in the stand, presenting herself incredibly well and very clearly, with several witnesses, including police and ambulance immediately after the event supporting how distressed she was and that she had injuries. He, on the other hand, gave completing conflicting and implausible evidence. The defence was reasonably feeble, and in his summing up the Judge, in our opinion, seemed to definitely favour her testimony. So, after summing up we left the court and awaited the verdict.

Several hours later, whilst in a meeting, I get a text to say "Not guilty!!". I have to say, I was speechless, genuinely stunned to be honest, and also completely gutted - as we all are. God only knows how she and her mum will be feeling!! It has been a completely, completely disheartening experience. We spend so much time trying to encourage women to report offences, and I even go and deliver training to Detective Sergeants and Detective Inspectors on treating sex workers as victims so to have an incident get to the point of getting to trial, only for that outcome is just so so disappointing. I think we all left work this evening more sombre than we've been in a long time. For us, for our client, and for the next victim of an obvious serial sex offender.

I just wanted to get home, put my feet up, drink a bottle of wine and forget about the day not to mention the fact that I have a 3000 word MA research assignment due on Wednesday, already with a weeks extension. However, X had a school disco I had promised her she could attend, so I dragged myself out, after a quick dinner, at 6.30pm to drop her and her friend off.

I was just driving away when I spotted JB, an old male friend that I must have known for 20 years! We have always been friends, who had a brief one night fling years ago - I think even before I had X, though it may have been after, and have continued in much the same way regardless of this. I don't see him very often, in fact I think the last time was some time in the summer, again at school, as his youngest goes to school with X, but we do catch up on facebook reasonably frequently. He is always a great person to see as he is just simply lovely, and will always say how nice I look and that I'm great, etc etc. Just a real feel good person to run into, with always just a hint of potential. I know the last time I saw him I definitely felt that something more physical was a possibility from my side, though I would never go out of my way to pursue it with him. Its just one of those things.

So, I pulled over and he hopped in the car for a quick word, and after 10 mins I said sod this, lets just go to the pub (he was going back to until the disco finished anyway) and have a few drinks and a catch up. So thats what we did. And it was just lovely to see him. We chatted about random past stuff, random current stuff, and a few cheeky comments about how come we never got together before going back to get the respective kids and I took them home. As he went to go we did the obligatory hug - he is a fabulous hugger, a real bear hug kind of guy - and a kiss on the cheek, with promises to catch up soon, etc. No different from the normal times we catch up, where we always promise to catch up soon and invariably never do until we randomly bump into each other again.

But, just as he went to go he kissed me. Nothing overtly sexual, no tongues or anything like that, but full on the mouth, with a tiny hint of open, for a good 3 seconds. It was odd, it was unexpected, but it was so incredibly nice. I keep pursing my lips at the memory and smiling to myself. It may go nowhere, as usual, and I am sure I will be absolutely fine with that, but nonetheless it was one of the nicest, if briefest, experiences I have had just lately. And my day, whilst all the crap has not been forgotten, is now ending on a very different note.