Golding sails from island to island on a land and sea alternating odyssey, and at some point, overwhelmed by enchantment, his memory of moments merge into the map of his travels so he can’t quite recall what happened on which island.  But the memories are still vivid, and I loved the image of the little girl in the marble doorway, and the crowd following a football match against the backdrop of a harbour dotted with coloured boats.

Was it Paros where the small girl stood inside an antique marble doorway carved with fruit and leaves, and she seemed grave and timeless as any archaic image carved from the marble seams of that same island?  Was it on the waterfront of Syra where the crowd listened with rapt faces to the broadcast of a Graeco-Italian football match in Athens, while the salmon-pink, cornflower-blue, grass-green, apricot-yellow caiques stood of in the harbour and the lime-green hills of another island were painted cardboard in a play and the water in between was like a city at twilight with an infinite switching on and off of lights from a hundred thousand switchboards? 

Wishing you many salmon-pink, cornflower-blue, grass-green and apricot-yellow moments.  

Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson, 1955), pp. 131-32

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