A fairground life(cyprus adventure ch19)

April 1999 Paphos
The day we were building up at Paphos was the hottest yet, The chap looking after the Medusa dark show asked me to move it for him onto its plot as he had no transport for it (it had sailed along with “a”s twist ride). Unknown to me the trailer brake had not been applied. When I shunted the unit under the front of the trailer it slid back off the two blocks and the front legs sank into the soft gravel. We could not get them to lift the truck up again. Eventually I asked Eric to lift it with his Hiab. This it just managed to do with all the alarms buzzing! I hastily got the lorry under to couple up.
The fair was setup and ready for operation by mid week, it was the Greek Easter from Friday and our Easter was next Friday. I though double dunt week, great! There were a couple of spaces in the fair due to equipment leaving for home. It was here that the real reason for the basketball game become apparent. Hank had a large cover made for it. Then he removed the baskets and hung the prizes along the back of the stall. It was identical in appearance to the lucky numbers game, this had been his plan all along! The Irishman asked me to make a game for his hoopla he had just acquired from the U.K. That would be another£50 for me on top of the basketball fee (if I ever got paid). He wanted a toss the coin on the square game. This was obviously because he seen how the Cypriots like to gamble and this was as close as you could get without using a roulette wheel. The next couple of days were spent marking out over 800 squares onto a 2 meter diameter table. Then I had to mark each one with a prize value from 20c to £5. It was taking so long that eventually there were six of us using marker pens to write the values. A few days later there was a near riot at the game. Two large Cypriots who had been playing at one spot for over an hour had eventually won. The only problem was that some clown had changed the 75c to £75. The Irishman tried always to avoid payment but the Cypriots had none of it and he eventually paid out. No one knows to this day except the culprit who changed the table markings. After that the Irishman inspected the table everyday.
The first night open at Pathos was Wednesday night. It was a buster for me, the twist ride had gone home and unluckily for “d” the superbob broke down due to a wheel ballrace. My ride went hard at it for three hours , so did the games and pop it ons. This was what we had all been waiting for. This was the first fair to visit here ever. The fair looked well as Mr”A” had decorated the perimeter wall with hundreds of yards of rope light. The site was so large that we used the front half as a car park. This led to a slight problem on the first Friday night. A local Cypriot trade decide to park in our car park and then start to trade his wares. He used hi van as a mobile stall. Mr”A” and the security tried to move him off, but he refused to go. It was only when Eric parked the Hiab lorry next to his van and threatened to lift it out that the Cypriot decided to move off. A number of them did setup market stalls and tables outside the gate of the fair to peddle their goods.