Dispatches for day 7 and 8 - once more into the breach of Operation 8 Depositions hearing

After a week in Wellington and a whole different court case, I'm back in Auckland for the second stretch of the depositions hearing. Tomorrow morning the bus will come to take us to court, and we'll be back into the three ring circus which is the depositions hearing.

On the last day of the last session the judge said that he would continue sitting until it was over. I'm not sure if that was a promise or a threat

I know I skipped dispatches of the last few days of court. The suppression orders made it very hard to give an accurate impression of what's going on. I could tell quirky anecdotes, and keep pepole updated of various signs that have been put up around the place. But there comes a stage when telling those stories gives people the wrong impression of what's going on in court. While I suspect I will be telling some of the stories from court for the rest of my life, it's more than funny anecdotes. The challenge for me is to give an accurate impression of court, without saying anything that happened in the court room.

So it'll just be one story, to cover those last few days, even though there are some funny anecdotes.

As I've said before, the registrar in court room eight has atrocious Maori pronunciation. Even above and beyond your standard Maori mispronunciation - I don't think he's pronounced a single Maori word right over the entire period (and he does the read-backs so it's a lot of words). On the last day, someone suggested to him that he could learn Maori pronunciation. It would only take him a few hours with a speaker to learn some of the words and basic principles. He replied "Yes, I know I get things wrong. I don't come from New Zealand. I think the good thing is that it makes me neutral."

Neutral is mis-pronouncing Rawiri Iti's name, but not Aaron Pascoe's.

I don't know how many dispatches there will be in the next few weeks of court, but I'll do my best to give people an impression of what's going on.