The Jellyfish Incident...

Today I will tell you about an amusing incident from my childhood, known as The Jellyfish Incident. Myself, my older sister, my mother and my mother's boyfriend, Kevin, were having a holiday at the seaside. I forget which seaside it was, but that's not important to the story. Just know that it involved a sandy beach with small rock pools which were revealed when the tide went out. I was about 6 or 7, and my sister Mandy was 8 or 9. Kevin was 19, and me and Mandy liked him because he used to make purple and green pancakes for us. (My mother's reasons for liking him were probably somewhat different...) Anyway, this particular hot and sunny day the tide was out and we were exploring the rock pools, when Kevin discovered a large jellyfish, stranded upside down on the sand, gently baking in the sun. Kevin decided he Must Do Something About This immediately- no poor creature was going to die on his watch. He had the rather genius idea of using several spoons and a large chip pan we had thoughtfully brought with us on our camping trip. (For those of you who are not familiar with Britain in the 1970's, a chip pan is a large saucepan you fill with cooking oil, heat until it's roughly the temperature of a volcano and put pieces of raw potato in to cook until golden brown, then you remove them, smother them with tomato sauce and gobble them down whilst they are still hot enough to melt the enamel from your teeth). These chip pans have now been replaced by deep fat fryers which have cut down on the number of kitchen/house/entire neighbourhood fires by a significant number, but the chips never taste as good as they used to.......
My sister and I stood on the rocks clapping and cheering and generally being encouraging while Kevin and my mother attempted to persuade the unfortunate jellyfish into the chip pan. It was no quick task; every time they got a bit of him in there on a spoon, he would slosh out the other side, him being made of jelly and all. Anyway, eventually most of the jellyfish was contained in the chip pan, with the rest of him hanging casually over the side, and Kevin felt it was time to Release Him Back Into The Wild.
Thus, he waded out triumphantly into the sea, chip pan held proudly aloft while we all clapped and cheered some more from our rocky perches. His Hero status was complete.
There was a flaw in his otherwise perfect plan though; he hadn't considered that the tide was now coming in, so when he gently plopped the jellyfish into the sea, it merely began following him back to shore. I will never forget the look of pure terror on his face as he ran in slow motion in-the-sea type strides back to shore, followed by what must surely be the most ungrateful jellyfish ever. Today's picture is my recollection of that event..... I hope you like it....