Cyprus Funfair Adventure Part two

That was probably the best all round day for everyone there and for all ages. I was sorry to leave this hotel, it felt like home as we had many birthdays and anniversary parties here. It had six floors , but if you asked the night porter for a room on the seventh floor, this was code for a temporary room if you had Russian female company. Not that I know from experience of course.
The new venue was Paphos. This was good news. Paphos was virgin territory for the funfair and it would fall with the Greek Orthodox Easter holidays. When the fair first came to Cyprus three years earlier it was not possible to go to Paphos , as the roads were not passable with the large rides. Since then the new road had been completed. We all went on visits to scope out this place before taking the equipment. Paphos was beautiful. There were hotels and bars everywhere. This was truly the tourist hotspot.
The new roads were through mountain tunnels and some of the hills were incredibly steep. The road was not completely finished, but it was passable with care. We all agreed on an evening trip as this would be cooler for the vehicles engines , the tyres and the road would be quieter.

April ,Paphos 1999

It was approaching Easter time at home, “a” had sent the twist back to catch his best fairs and Yhan took the Dutch lucky number game home also. Mr“A” had ideas about staying the summer and setting up a permanent funfair park in Limassol on the sea front. Thoughts about this had been circulating since we first arrived in Cyprus, now it was coming to decision time. He and George had secured an empty plot of land next to McDonalds. The location seemed like a dead certainty , but the terrain was waste ground and would require a lot of work. “c” had started to look in Europe for another ride to bring here for the summer. “d” was taking the superbob home ,but decided to make a stall to stay the summer with and also leave two round games and the balloon slide all of which his sisters in law was going to look after. As for me , I wasn’t in a position to leave equipment here and for reasons to become clear in the next three weeks, would think it was going to be no good anyway.

The site at Paphos was the best we had been on. It was next to the old Keo brewery. It was near the town and had a low wall around it with a lockable double gate. It was a white kind of gravel surface, perfectly flat and made the site look very clean as if on a marble floor. The only problem was it gave us snow blindness and we had to wear sunglasses all the time because of the glare from it. The hotel we were staying in was the Damon. It was fine and had a large swimming pool. We almost lost “w” in this, she was with the other kids in the small pool. She was wearing an inflatable ring around her waist. She dropped her doll in the pool and as she bent down to pick it up she flipped right over and the ring held her head under and her legs in the air. We were all at the pool sunbathing but didn’t see this happen! Luckily one of the other kids of the same age seen her and pulled her upright. What a fright when they told us. After that no rubber ring , only armbands. I still have nightmares now when I think back about it. We will never be as lucky again.

The night I pulled the ride into Paphos was so clear, the stars were bright and this seemed like a different planet not a different country. The air was warm and I could not believe we only had four weeks to go until home. Our original flight tickets were to expire in two weeks, so my father and mother in law were to go home then. My wife and family would change our tickets for an extended period to finish this fair.

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 (Yhan had taken it back with him). 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 journey to Larnaca was too far now and we decided to stop the children going to the private teacher. They had done a lot of work in the last three months and it did make an improvement to “r”s education.

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 trader decide to park in our car park and then start to trade his wares. He used his van as a mobile stall. M “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.

Eventually “d” found a small engineers to make him a new nylon wheel for the ride, but it would take another day. This delayed his opening again and for that week I was very busy everyday. Eventually “d” went back to Limassol to try and find wheels for the ride from a scrap yard. They were the same type as old hospital trolleys. He ended up in a scrap yard belonging to an old Cypriot called ‘crazy Michael’. Luckily he found spare wheels to repair his ride there.

My father in law and I also went to this scrap yard to source five core cable for the ride. I was going to need some now for when I returned home since I had changed the ride from 110v dc. I went to the yard office in Limassol. As I walked in there were two of the most stunningly beautiful women I had ever seen. They had dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin. They both were made up like models and had figures to suit. Both were in their thirties I would guess.

I asked for crazy Michael, by the look on their faces I quickly realised that they did not care for the ‘crazy’ part of his title. It was revealed to me later by George , that Michael was in his eighties and attending hospital in London for a heart condition. Those two beautiful women were his daughters and run the business for him. Apparently, Michael made his fortune while working for the British army in the 50’s. He was in charge of the fuel depot. In those days they were allowed up to 20% loss a day on the fuel through evaporation. You don’t have to be a master mind to work out what that led to! George said that the “English were very stupid” no doubt George associated with Michael during their younger days. The daughters summoned a Cypriot worker to take me and my father in law to the main yard a short car trip away. When we got there, behind the locked gate it was a treasure trove of ex-army surplus and assorted ‘good junk’. There was a mountain of “jerry” cans, engines, alternators, aircraft parts, armoured cars etc etc. After a short search we found what we were looking for. I pulled out the cable into a straight line to inspect it. The Cypriot pulled out a measuring tape. He gave one end to my father in law to hold. As we walk to the other end , my father in law waited and then followed us a bit to make the measurement shorter (we still laugh about it). With the measurement taken, it was time to haggle the price. I could speak no Cypriot and he could speak no English and we eventually reached an agreement by scratching figures into the ground with a stick! (we still laugh about that too). He wanted £160 CY for the cable. It was bought for £120 CY. This was £80 to Michael, £40 for the Cypriot and £40 to me that I saved from original price, plus thirty feet that was not measured. That cable still works fine today.