a fairground life(cyprus adventure ch9)

Jan 2??th 1999
Mr”a” , “c” ,”d” had hired cars from George (one of his numerous business) they were £6 per day to hire and were death traps to say the least. How? Well we noticed that some of the cars were one colour at the front and a shade different at the back. This was because you couldn’t import a car over a certain age into Cyprus, but you could import scrap cars for spares. So the Cypriots would buy cheap cars from Japan, cut them in half, import them as spare parts and then weld them together again! We all piled into the three cars and drove to the docks in Limassol. We offloaded the ship. Unfortunately my ride had sustained slight damage when the other rides were loading in Europe. Eric’s ride was very heavy around 50tons. When they were loading it the tractor unit of his started to skid on the deck plates. This caused it to “fish tail” and it hit the side of my ride. The damage was minor, a bent iron and a gash in an aluminium tread plate sheet. We got the rides off the ship and moved them to a storage pen in the docks. We thought we would be leaving in a matter of minutes, not the case. Customs were coming to inspect the equipment. Nothing for it but, back to the Hotel. We didn’t have a lot of clothes with us because everything was packed into the ride to save bringing it with us on the aeroplane.
This daily event went on for almost a week. They have a saying in Cyprus, one that I use now-“if not today , maybe tomorrow”. When customs did arrive they wanted a temporary import bond on the value of the equipment. This would be returned when all the equipment left Cyprus. We hastily produced a valuation sheet for all the rides, at a much reduced value since the bond was calculated as a percentage of the value. We also had to state that all the equipment belonged to Mr”a”. These matters did raise concerns for the individual. What if someone wanted to leave before the other rides? What about any insurance claims on the equipment after we devalued it for customs? And finally we had stated that Mr”a” owned our rides! There was no other choice, it was the only way to negotiate with customs and get the rides out. Mr”a” used all his cash and max’ed out his gold card, George had allegedly put up his house! We thought that was that, but no, they wanted import duty for all the cuddly toys we were bringing in as prizes for the games. There was no more money left, but then a stroke of luck, Mr”a” told the customs officer that they were ‘presents’ for the children of the local Cypriots attending the fair. “Oh!, presents for our children.”he said, all of a sudden we were nice people and the rides were cleared to go. We were meant to leave one at a time and have our registration checked off a list as we left the docks. I had a problem, due to the change of lorries the manifest had the broken down lorries reg and not the borrowed lorries reg. Mr”a” came to the cab and handed me a cover note for motor insurance. As soon as I got it I began to move, I got in line behind the others. When I got to the gates I didn’t slow down, I just kept on driving not giving the guard time to check for the reg or stop me. When I was out of sight of the docks I stopped for a check around before driving the 56 miles to Lanarka. When I got into the vehicle I noticed that the air was down. I had to rev the engine hard to get the pressure up again. I drove off to complete my journey to Larnaka. I stopped at a set of lights on a crossroads. When I tried to pick away. I got half way across and lost the clutch. The lights changed again and I had blocked the crossroads. The air was down again. The lorry had an air assisted clutch and without pressure I wouldn’t be able to move. I rev’ed the lorry hard again for a few minutes to get pressure up. By this time the lights had changed again , traffic was building up and the car horns started honking. I got across the lights and pulled in again. I went under the truck to find the air leak. It was the air suspension on the truck! One air pipe had a small hole in it. When I had loaded onto the boat and mounted the ramp at 45deg, all the weight of the truck was on this airbag , maybe it burst then and that’s why the diesel racks were catching the ramp. Either way I had to rev the lorry constantly to keep enough pressure to work the clutch and release the brakes.
I drove the lorry hard all the way, driving in a lower gear to keep the engine revs up.