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Chorio, like Pothia, is mostly blue, with a few houses painted yellow ochre, a few white. The touches on window-shutters and doors of pink and lime and cinnamon and grey are nothing short of miraculous. The blues range from the merest brightening of stark white, like a blue-rinsed sheet, to a thick, rich ultramarine. The variations on this one colour seem to be infinite, combined with the subtle differences of wall textures, shapes, levels and the weathering effect of the sun, the blue sometimes produces fantastic optical illusions, particularly as the streets as well as the houses are covered with a thick coating of paint. Stairs melt into walls, corners curve, pavements swell into domed ovens. Sometimes there is no line of demarcation between house and sky, and walls soar up and thin out into pure atmosphere or the sky sweeps down to your feet, solidified with two pink windows and a pot of red carnations drawn on. The black-clad women are exclamation points against the blue, their every movement emphatic, final, intuitively right, something completed and beautiful. Every scrap of colour sings – a boy’s red jersey, an orange cat, a tray of poison-coloured sweets, a flower dropped on a twisted stair.
(Charmian Clift, Mermaid Sings, 11)