Excerpt from book on UFO sightings

 

9. Donkey Street

It was late September of the following year and I had continued to stay on after the harvest in Romney Marsh to help with the autumn work. I was assigned a field at the end of Donkey Street (see yellow star map below) near the pub called Botolph’s Bridge, (see the red marker in map).

I would normally finish work at 10 pm and go back to the Hotel Fleur de Lys to have a soft drink and go to bed. This particular evening, it seemed strange that Botolph’s Bridge was closed as it wasn’t yet 10 o’clock. I finished work, locked my tractor and drove home in my car, realising that all the pubs on my way were closed. It felt strange as I drove through New Romney towards Brenzett seeing everything in darkness. I arrived at the hotel which was also in darkness but the back door was still unlocked. I went straight up, had my shower and went to bed, missing my soft drink at the bar. I didn’t understand. The time was twenty-five past ten on my watch. The closing time for pubs on Romney Marsh during the week was 10:30 pm.

The following morning the Fleur de Lys was unusually full of people moving around as I was going to work at my regular time of 7 am. Normally, when I would come downstairs, only the landlady would be around.

That day at 11:15 am the farmer came out to the field and jumped on the tractor with me. We spent about fifteen minutes chatting about different things, then he praised me for my work. He asked me “What time do you stop for lunch?”. “Twelve o’clock” I answered. He asked, “Do you know it is half past twelve now?”  I replied, looking at my watch: “No, it’s only half past eleven.” He corrected me with the time. I was left to think and then said, “Oh me, I was an hour late this morning then! My watch was out by one hour”. We looked at each other and he said: “That’s ok,” smiled and then left.

Again I found myself confounded and began thinking back to the night before. I had turned on the radio for my regular country music program from 7 to 9 pm while I was ploughing. When the program finished at 9 pm I had turned off the radio and thought to myself that I’ll be stopping in about an hour. The next time I looked at my watch it was just shy of a quarter to 10. I noticed that the pub was already shut. I then continued work for another ten minutes, not understanding why it was shut.

Now I realised an hour had been lost somewhere between 9 pm and 9:45 pm. I had no clue as to how or why this could have happened. It just did not make sense.

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