a fairground life(cyprus adventure ch6)

Jan 3rd 1999
The next morning I borrowed a trailer to carry the transformer. I then went to pick up my brother and “b”( “b”came to help us for a week back in 1980, nearly 30 years later he’s still here and there’s no sign of him wanting to leave. He’s like one of the family). We got to the lorry where the transformer was. My brother said “the transformers in there.” As I opened the back door the lorry was full from front to back , floor to roof , “all we have to do is lift the dodgem out first”. He wasn’t joking it took us almost 2hrs to clear a path to the transformer. It was fitted low into the chassis of the lorry. It was too heavy to lift so we fastened a chain hoist to the roof of the lorry and raised it up onto a couple of scaffolding tubes to use as rollers. After another hour it was on the trailer. All we had to do now was put all the dodgem back into the lorry. Sigh ….
That evening I phoned a friend who had a hiab lorry. I asked him to come over and lift the transformer onto the ride for me as we were leaving for Sheppey tomorrow. I climbed up over the side of the ride and looked down into it. There was only one gap where the transformer might fit. When the hiab arrived we hoisted the transformer up high and over the trailer. As I guided it down into position on the ride it scraped the sides as it went down. Another couple of mm bigger and it wouldn’t have fitted in and there was no where else to put it, at last a piece of good luck!
Jan 4th 1999
It was 4 am when I climbed into the lorry. I was going down with two other showmen, “d” and his father in law “a”. These two had been in Cyprus three years earlier, so they knew the ropes. They were also up and down the country all the time , they new all the roads no problem, I had only driven to London a couple of times so I didn’t really know any truck stops or local services beyond Carlisle. “d” was taking the ‘superbob’ down and “a” was taking the ‘twist’, both rides were on artics’. It was a 500mile trip and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Especially because of “c” who went down the week before with two trucks and spent a night on the M25, due to having numerous blowouts on the ‘dodgem’ ride’s trailers’. To make things worse the tyres on the trucks were quite old and an awkward size to get. We met at London rd about 4.20 am and set sail for the M74. After 20 minutes I was just settling into the driving seat when I heard “pop” and then the lorry began to slow. The brakes were coming on! I pulled over onto the hard shoulder. When I got around to the trailer I could hear air hissing out. I thought I had burst an airline but thankfully the red line had just uncoupled. I musn’t have put it on right. Just as I connected it “d” appeared, “what’s a matter?” he said. “nothing , the red line just come off” I replied and with that we were off again. I can’t tell you how relieved I was, I couldn’t take any more setbacks, there wasn’t any time left to overcome them. We continued our journey for around 12 hours, stopping every few hours to fuel up the lorries or take a brake. “a” was a little slower than “d” and I so we had to wait for him a couple of times. I’m glad to say it was a rather uneventful trip for all off us. We got to the Dartford crossing just as it was getting dark. I paid the fare and crossed. It was only another couple of hours to go. As for the rest of the trip all I can remember is crossing over a bridge onto the Isle of Sheppy and into the docks. We stayed the night in a BB , but I cant remember how we got there. The next day we were to load the ship.