a fairground life(cyprus adventure ch8)

Jan 2?th 1999
I don’t remember the exact date we flew out, I remember that my mother and father came to see us off. There was about 14 of us flying out that night. The flight was to Athens with a couple of hours stopover and then onto another flight into Lanarka (this was the cheapest way we could get there). It was after 7pm when we left Glasgow. I was looking forward to being in Athens, I don’t know why, but I had this silly thought of seeing the city before we flew out! When we arrived at Athens it was late. The part of the airport we were in was just like a large tin shed. All the shops and facilities were closed. We couldn’t leave this area to go to other facilities in the airport. We all scavenged around and had enough between us all to make a couple of sandwiches. We were almost the only people in the place. We got the kids settled down to sleep by making beds on the seats and floor. It would be 7am before the restaurants would open, only 5 hours to go. What a hard way to get to Cyprus. The next flight was fine. The weather was clear and I had a window seat. I could sea the Med down below and the Greek islands. It wasn’t long before we landed in Lanarka airport.
Lanarka airport was sparse to say the least. When we arrived we had to go through emigration. That’s when we noticed the big signs everywhere. They said that all currency that we were bringing into the country over £1000 had to be declared. Why? Well you are not allowed to take money out of Cyprus. To confirm that any money you want to leave with is yours, it must be declared on entering and you get a receipt so that you can take upto that amount out with you. I had a lot more than a £1000 on me. It was emergency money to get us home and to keep us until we got operating and earning money. I decided to take no chances and declare it. I had to complete a registration form to say where I was staying, how long, contact nos. etc etc. Out of the airport the weather was fine and sunny, better than back home for this time of year. Being here seemed like a great idea already. Mr”a” and some others had flewn in a few days before us. His Cypriot partner called “george” (not his real name, but an alias for ease dealing with foreigners, his real name was Greek) had arranged hotel apartments for us to stay in. It was off season and the hotel was usually closed at this time. There was no staff on just the manager who was also the bell boy who was also the barman(you get the idea), It was cheap though, £4 per night.
The pool was empty of water though and we were worried about the kids falling into it and hurting themselves so we asked for it to be filled. A couple of days later it was, now we worried about them falling in and drowning! We were in a ground floor apartment and my mother in law was on the first floor. We met the European Showmen for the first time, an Austrian (Eric and his wife), Dutch(Hank and a younger lad and an older man, both of their names escapes me now), I had no transport, but it wasn’t a problem as the fairground site was literally right across the road. It was on the shoreline almost on the beach. (Lanarka doesn’t have sand on its beaches, more like a course gravel).
The next day we were to offload the ship. The docks were in Limassol. More tomorrow