Footprints in the frying pan.....
On Saturday 13th February 1971 I flew to Jersey in a Vickers Viscount turboprop aircraft,my first ever flight and by the time it landed in St Helier I was totally deaf!
I was met at the airport by a mate I'd worked with in Twyford who'd gone to Jersey earlier to work on a farm,which is where I stayed for the weekend.
We got in a small car he'd hired and drove to the German Underground Hospital,by which time my hearing had returned and took in various other sights of Jersey and later in the day headed to his digs in an outbuilding on the farm where he lived.
The accommodation was grubby and basic and had probably been used by hundreds of seasonal workers and the bed and 'linen' was very damp,bordering on wet and didn't appear as though it had ever been washed or changed.
The following morning my mate cooked breakfast in a black frying-pan (on a small cooker near the bed),in which was equally black congealed fat and on which were the footprints of the many mice who'd passed that way at some point.....
After our egg and bacon we had another drive around the Island and later stopped at a 'restaurant' for Sunday Roast.
We ordered two dinners and the 'waitress' was an elderly scruffy unwashed and unshaven man who reminded me of the old gold prospector in Treasure of the Sierre Madre and who brought our dinners over separately as he had a walking stick in one hand and did his best to stop the greasy gravy running off the plate while doing nothing about the fact he was coughing violently over the dinners!
The following day Monday 15th February 1971 was 'Decimal Day' and after buying a 'Jersey States Lottery Ticket' for 25p I headed to the airport for home.
I found the lottery ticket recently still as bought and with the numbers never checked...
I could of been rich........
I wasn't well for a couple of weeks after returning having the worst cold/flu I'd ever a had..........

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