ROB DILLEY'S STORY
Here is an unusual photograph of some faces you will recognise( if it was not negative !!) I have not yet figured out how to get it back to positive, though I imagine it is simple if you know what you are doing with some photo editing software. I can name three out of the six. The negative photograph was a question for a quiz night at the club that the kids put together chaired by yours truly. Well I would have chaired it, but ended up stretcher-ing it, as I broke my leg and got plastered ( and in that order) preparing the quiz. So how do you break your leg preparing a quiz ? That takes a little explaining.
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Who are the six people? Do you know? |
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This particular quiz must have been April 1975. I got comprehensively smashed up in a friend’s car in November 1974. I broke my leg, my arm and neck. I was bed ridden in traction at Ashford General Hospital for three and a half months before being able to walk with a caliper on my leg. I was then able to fly out to Aden to convalesce.
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Rob in Ashford hospital |
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By March 1975 a whole bunch of Aden kids had flown out for school holidays, and I had been allowed to dispense with the calliper. It was the 31st March when the quiz committee met at one of the houses to prepare the questions. I decided to get out of my chair and walk over to get another drink. At the same time Debbie Roberts decided to get up from her chair and walk to my side of the room. We both stepped to the left to avoid bumping into each other, and then we both stepped to the right, and then we both stepped to the left again&ldots;..and we bumped into each other. I fell over, and Debbie fell onto my leg. My leg made a horrible noise as it broke again. Strange thing was that my dad was the duty doctor on call that night. So late on the 31st March he arrived at the house, grinning like a Cheshire cat thinking he was the victim of an April fools joke.
“Where does it hurt?” he said with a beaming smile. I do not remember my exact words, but there were certainly a few words that I would not normally use.
So I ended up reading the quiz questions on a hospital trolley at the club with my leg in plaster from my hip to my toe. This was obviously a curious sight and I remember that I was much photographed during and after the quiz. Has anyone got any of those photographs ? I have found a picture taken on the flight back to U.K. where I was perched on my stretcher next to Debbie and Dianne Spiers.
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Rob on the plane home with Debbie & Diane Spiers |
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Getting onto the plane was scary. I was put in a high lift catering lorry so the Yemeni aircraft loaders did not have to try and get me up the stairs. The stretcher was aluminium and the plaster cast slid all over the place. When it did not seem that the stretcher would go in flat, they tipped it on its side, and I had to hang on for dear life as I slid off the stretcher twenty feet above the ground. Worst of all was the removal of the plaster cast once I got back to Ashford General Hospital. A tool that looked exactly like a circular saw was used to cut through the plaster cast. I was having kittens as no one had bothered to explain that the saw was oscillating and not rotating.
I was back in traction for another three and a half months and eventually made a fairly good recovery.
Rob Dilley