a fairground life(cyprus adventure ch10)

End Jan 1999
As Cyprus is an ex colony, they drive on the left same as us, I was relieved. The Europeans all had Left hand drive vehicles. The local lorries were all very old, Leyland’s, BMC’s the younger ones were Hino’s. There were only three Scania’s on the island and two of them belonged to Eric! At the side of the roads, in fields, anywhere that a vehicle broke down it stayed there, for decades! I seen Leyland Octopus lorries on the side of the roads and they stopped getting produced in the 60’s. After about an hour I arrived at the funfair site in Larnaca. The ground condition was like clay with a lot of lime in it. We were told it would rot our shoes! I pulled the vehicle onto the site and parked it along the rear of the area. Mr “a” would set the locations tomorrow. As I walked across the ground the clay began to stick to my boots, it was very difficult to walk. Every few paces I had to scrape the clay from my boots as it was weighing me down and making me slip, After reaching the roadside I cleaned my boots again, it felt like I had walked for miles! What would this ground be like in the rain? We had been closed for a week now and eating from the local store was too expensive. My wife and I hitched a lift with “d” and his wife to the town centre. We all went into Woolworth’s. It’s not like woolys in the UK. No it’s more like M&S. It had a wide selection of clothing and downstairs was a large food section. This is were we shopped for food our entire stay in Lanarca.
When the fair was set by Mr”a” I started to erect the ride. I had to level the chassis and get the floors folded out. Before I could continue I had to remove the extra cargo aboard (luggage, market joint, hoopla). We were glad to see the luggage as we had been living out of one case for four of us whilst trying to get the rides out of the docks. Since I had to lift the hoopla anyway I decided to erect it at the same time. Just aswell as I didn’t want to lay it on the sticky clay ground. After a few trip up and down the tread plate floor of the ride looked dirty and there was no water onsite to wash it either. That night the ride was fully set up and the Hoopla needed a table to be made from plywood before being ready to be tried out. The next day I rewired the ride into the transformer and tried the new system. It worked perfectly! What a relief. “d” needed plywood and so did I, we went with his hire car to a builders yard to get some. They were 8’ x 4’ sheets 1/2inch thick. We bought six sheets, but how were we going to get it home? Simple we put the sheets onto the roof of the car and then rolled down the windows. I put one hand out and onto the roof to hold the sheets at my side, ”d” who was driving done the same at his side. With our free hands I changed gear and “d” steered the car. After 10 mins we were back at the fairground. It was funny, we didn’t seem to worry about being pulled up by the police, I mean we would never have done that at home! After making the table I went to try the bin game. I wired all the bins to the battery charger and switched it on. As the bins opened and closed they moved about slightly. It was the first time that I had seen them all working at once. All of a sudden there was sparks flying about. Some of the bins had moved together and touched, because they were metal and the bin was earthed to make the 12v motor work they shorted out. I immediately switched the charger off. I realised that I had to make sure the polarity was the same on all the bins. After a few trial attempts I got them all going and there was no shorts, but to stop them moving I had to put stones in the bottoms to weigh them down. I still had no game for the market stall so I laid it under the ride. We were meant to open on Wednesday night ,but due to the other rides having a slow build up it was put of until Thursday. Two Cypriot cars came with families in. They weren’t happy that we were not open as they had come from paphos( the other end of the island) mr”a” gave them £10 each for petrol and promised them free rides when they returned. The fair was going to operate on tokens, but mr”a” didn’t have any. He tried to get them made on the island but no one could do it, then he had a brain wave. There was a place on the island that made cocktail mixing sticks for all the bars and hotels. These sticks had the bars logo or name on a disc shaped end. Mr “a” ordered 10,000 mixing sticks with Cyprus’s theme park on the disc. That night we all sat in mr”a”s room and broke the discs off the sticks.