A man who was shot in the cheek while he worked at a marina with his children has shared his memories of the moment he was attacked.

Ray Weatherall took to the stand in the trial of his wife Hayley Weatherall, her lover Glenn Pollard and his daughter Heather who are accused of conspiracy to murder.

Earlier today, Mr Weatherall spoke of an incident where he 'caught alight' after a boiler exploded.

In his evidence, he told the hushed court of the moment he was shot and the moment he discovered his wife was having an affair with his best mate.

Glenn Pollard, he said, knew that he would be working at the marina on November 29 with his son Sam and daughter Jade.

“There was nothing untoward at all at that point,” he said.

Describing the shooting, he said: “We were having five minutes. We all knelt down on the riverbank nearly under the tree. We were having a smoke and a drink and just taking five really.

“I knelt down on my knees. The next thing there was this almighty crack. I thought something fell out of the tree and hit me on the head.

“It became very evident within seconds it was not that. Blood started pouring out of my nose, out of my ears. I couldn’t breathe because of the amount of blood.

“It took a couple of minutes. I seemed to regain my senses. I blew the blood out of my nose to get rid of it so I could breathe.

“He said ‘Dad, dad, is it your head?’ I said ‘It is my head boy, but it ain’t my tumours..." Ray Weatherall

“I proceeded to calm my son down. He was absolutely hysterical, running around the yard shouting and screaming and crying. I had to get hold of him. It sounds very strange.

“He said ‘Dad, dad, is it your head?’ I said ‘It is my head boy, but it ain’t my tumours. Calm down.’”

Mr Weatherall said he became aware of an ambulance being called, adding: “I was well on top of it by then. I got to grips with what happened. I knew I had been shot. It became so evident.

“I had a hole here and a hole there and blood, but I knew I was alright. There is a scar where it went in and came out over here.”

He was taken to the QEQM Hospital in Margate, where he was visited by his wife and Glenn Pollard. He was treated and discharged the same day.

“As far as they were concerned I was safe to go home,” he said. “I think they put a plaster over it.”

He was told a “facial split” could be carried out but he declined it because of his brain tumour.

“I had a job to open my mouth,” he said. “It damaged the nerves in my jaw. I struggled to eat for a few days but pushed on. It’s 99.9 per cent sorted."

By Christmas 2017 he said his relationship with his wife was shaky.

“We constantly argued over something and nothing. That might sound strange.”

They were both prescribed antidepressants. “Everything went pretty swimmingly well and then it all went down the pan,” he continued.

Glenn Pollard was a regular visitor to their home and the frequency increased shortly before he was shot.

“He was just there more than he used to be. He was very intrusive with the children. As soon as one of the kids cried he was like Jack Flash off the arm (of the settee) and up the stairs.

“He had days when he was very quiet. I asked him many a time ‘Are you alright boy?’ 'I don’t know.'”

Mr Weatherall said he found out about the affair after Christmas last year when Pollard left his phone on the arm of the settee as he was leaving and he saw a text arrive from his wife.

“That was it,” he said. “They come up with a prefix, who it is from and the first four or five words. The message was from Hayley. I can’t remember exactly the first line. I know the last two were ‘Love you’.

“It was two or three weeks after I was shot. It must have been after Christmas. I don’t remember any serious issues over Christmas.

“I went out to the kitchen where Hayley was. I asked her what she was playing at. She told me she only kissed him once and he tried to react with the same answer.

“I asked Glenn: ‘Why the f--- would you do that to me, supposedly your best mate?’ I was livid. His answer was: ‘It’s just feelings.’ Exact words.

“At that point I lost the plot and grabbed Glenn by the throat. Then I thought, no, too many people in the house. Not the time and place. I let go. I told him to get the f--- out of my house. He left.”

Mr Weatherall said he and Hayley were “a bit up and down for a few days”, before they were back on speaking terms.

She told him on January 28 this year that Glenn and Heather Pollard had been arrested.

She said: “What’s this? All this has arisen just because I kissed Glenn once. You are trying to set him up.’

“My answer was: ‘How could I set him up?’ I still didn’t know what was going on at that point.” Asked how she reacted, he replied: “Not the best in the world, but not too serious.”

After accusing him of setting up Pollard, Hayley said the police had phoned her about the shooting.

“I am sorry, it was nothing to do with me. I reported nothing. It was outside information. I know who it was now. At that time, I didn’t.

“I think I said something along the lines of ‘How the f--- can I be setting Glenn up? It isn’t possible. You can’t set someone up for what he is involved in.’

“I think she responded: ‘Alright, so you haven’t.’”

Mr Weatherall, who once owned a garage, said he came home one day to find his wife in her dressing gown and described her as “a broken down wreck – crying, sobbing, gasping for breath”.

She had a pocket full of tablets and suicide letters.

“That’s when she told me the rest of what was going on,” he said. “I put my arms around her and told her to calm down. She spilled the beans about what was going on.

“Hayley told me Glenn had given her £500 in an envelope and proceeded to present her with a handful of sleeping tablets, asking her to crush them up and put them in my food or whatever.

“She assured me she hadn’t done that. I would have no reason not to believe her, because it was the morning after she was to put them in my dinner.”

“Two days later I got a bang on the door. The police were there to take her away...” - Ray Weatherall

Mr Weatherall said he saw tablets in the bin and thought his wife, who used to be a carer, had thrown old ones out. It was evident, he said, they were the tablets Pollard had given to her.

“She said she was to crush up the tablets and put them in my food any which way. Once I was asleep, she was told to inject me with a full insulin pen. She would have access to my insulin.”

His wife had text Pollard after the shooting saying: “Whatever it was you paid to shoot Ray they didn’t make a very good job did they? Hahaha.”

She had told her husband the affair started on the day of his brother Kevin’s funeral on June 12 last year. Hayley texted Pollard saying he looked smart in his suit. He replied that she looked not too bad herself.

Weatherall told her husband Pollard had said: “I will take care of him. I will get someone to shoot him. If not, I will do it myself.”

Mr Weatherall said he took the money and his wife’s letters to the police in Folkestone. He explained to officers she was “not good” mentally.

“They asked me to bring her over that afternoon,” he said. “I told her what the crack was and put her in the car and took her to Folkestone. They proceeded to interview her again.

“Two days later I got a bang on the door. The police were there to take her away.”

Mr Weatherall said his wife’s suicide letter to him said she was sorry for everything that happened, adding: “I think this the easiest way, to take the coward’s way out.”

Mr Weatherall, a father-of-seven, said he had known Pollard for about 23 years and they became close “without question”, adding: “He was more or less like a brother.”

Before he was shot, Pollard’s daughter Heather started visiting his home more than she had done before and took his children out. He asked his wife: “Why is she coming over so much lately?”

Mr Weatherall said he used to go out shooting with Pollard. He agreed Pollard was a good shot.

Mr Weatherall was diagnosed with cancerous tumours deeply embedded in his brain in 2015 and was told it was terminal.

His specialist told him in early 2016 he could die within 18 months. He had radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

His relationship with Hayley was “fine” in the spring of last year, apart from “a little bit of a hiccup six to eight weeks before everything went completely wrong”.

It was then they were prescribed antidepressants, which helped for a while and it then felt like “a downhill slide”.

Mr Weatherall was adamant that Glenn Pollard was not responsible for the swimming pool heater blowing up.

“Glenn was never, and could never have been, involved in that incident,” he said. “I told the police that. I put lighter fuel on it. I thought it was taking time to light.”

He agreed with Eloise Marshall, QC, for Pollard, it was a complete accident. He told the police he could not think of anybody who had a grudge against him.

Mr Weatherall denied he and his wife had cooked up the story that Pollard had given her the tablets to administer to him.

Miss Marshall asked him: “Your were fairly and squarely blaming Glenn, weren’t you?”

"Glenn was never, and could never have been, involved in that incident...” Ray Weatherall

He replied: “No, her words to me were: ‘He was trying to pay me off, and if I didn’t do it I was the next one on the hit list?’”

Questioned by Oliver Saxby, QC for Heather Weatherall, he agreed he had described her as someone who always craved her father’s attention, but did not always get it.

“She thinks she is a man in a female’s body,” he said. “She told everyone she wanted to be called Arthur. I told her I wouldn’t do it. Only her mum refers to her as Arthur. I believe she has only had one girlfriend.”

Mr Weatherall agreed with Isabella Forshall, QC for Weatherall, that when his clothes caught fire in the explosion, his wife was screaming “Get into the pool.”

He also agreed she was ashamed and upset about her affair with Pollard and did not believe he would kill her husband. She was scared to say what was going on.

“She told me she hadn’t gone through with it with the pills, and I believed every word of it,” he said. “There was nothing whatsoever – and that’s not me trying to cover for anyone.

“I was asked this by the police and the answer is the same now – no.”

Miss Forshall asked: “You are not saying she agreed with any attempt to kill you? She was not saying that to you was she?”

Mr Weatherall answered: “No.”

The trial continues.