It's amazing what you can find in an op-shop! Although I normally don't look for 'multi-purpose gadgets' but head straight for the book and DVD section where I've just now found a copy of Sophia Loren's first English-language movie, "The Boy on a Dolphin".
I'm not so much a fan of Sophia Loren (although, who isn't?) as I am of the Greek Island of Hydra where the movie was made, and of Charmian Clift's writing who, with her husband George Johnston, lived on Hydra and described the movie-making in her book "Peel me a Lotus" thus:
"Incredibly, it is happening. Like an invading army they are coming, with great weird landing-barges that nose grimly into the tiny scoop of harbour and bear down on the moorings where the wine boats were blessed a week ago.
The dense, still clots of people on the quay sigh on a long exhaling note, and slowly, inexorably, the monstrous maws open and down the ramps roll the first wheels these cobbles have ever known - jeeps, trucks, trailers, tractors, half-tracks, strange, shrouded instruments, wheeled lamps. The ordnance of the conquering army.
From the lovely marble spire of the Monastery of the Virgin the great bronze bell crashes out the first stroke of noon, invoking a shattering roar of turning motors as the jeeps and vehicles move off in procession, a triumphal procession that is not the less impressively awful for being hampered by the inadequate length of the waterfront and the clutter of market stalls and café tables."
Charmian devoted a whole chapter in her much neglected masterpiece "Peel me a Lotus" to the making of "The Boy on a Dolphin" but if you want to read more, you'll just have to buy the book yourself as I'm not about to break copyright laws for your literary edification.
However, as a special treat, I'm happy to share with you the full-length version of "The Boy on a Dolphin" which has it all: glimpses of Rhodes, the Acropolis, Delphi, Poros, the Meteora Monasteries, but best of all beautiful Hydra which used to be my escape from smog-filled Athens.
Enjoy!
