The Fall

Fifteen minutes earlier we’d been admiring the heritage streetscapes of Millthorpe and enjoying coffee and cake in a trendy café.

Sporting my new Middlemost coat and oblivious to what lies ahead in Millthorpe

Then, just one step. One misstep. That’s all it took! Does it happen in slow mo? It definitely absorbs your attention. Descending and landing. HARD. On the floor for far longer than you’re airborne. Then leg buckled under heavy body. Gyrating like a semi turned turtle. Gasping in pain. Lots of hands and lower limbs come into view as people crouch down offering aid. The shop proprietor has to go next door to get a cup of water. Water is a panacea. I gulp down my arthritis meds and take deep breaths between sips. There are ‘Mind the Step’ signs pinned up and fluoro tape edging on the floor apparently; I saw neither. I was chatting to my husband and the owner about a scarf we were buying. I reached out to touch some garments on a stand and fell in a split second. 

The fateful scene (well just adjacent to the fateful scene)

Adrenaline lets me exchange pleasantries with the people who gather around me and I somehow manage to sit upright on the rogue step. A woman says ‘it is dangerous, it isn’t obvious’ and her husband says ‘there’s signs and tape that’s what you’re supposed to do’. The shop owner laments the uneven floors of old buildings. ‘You do need to do something’ says the first woman. An Irish guy wearing a tweed sports jacket with toning scarf asks if there’s anything he can do to help. There isn’t. Then he compliments my husband who is now swathed in the new scarf, on being ‘nattily’ dressed. The proprietor takes my name and phone number. I don’t think to get anyone’s.

Somehow I stumble without yelping audibly to the wooden bench outside the shop and wait while my husband goes to get the car. He’s been assured it is okay to double park. The streets are hardly busy. He returns and I hobble into the passenger seat. My leg and ankle feel like something is ripped. I ring our lunch hosts and leave a pitiful message about having fallen and needing to get to Emergency. 

Triage, Orange Hospital

We drive the 15 minutes to Orange hospital. The staff bring me a wheelchair and fast track me to triage where the kindly nurse with a spectacular inked moth at her throat asks me if I’d heard a ’crack’. I say I didn’t but the impact was undeniable. I hand over my Medicare card. For some reason the medical practice I have been attending for 10 years doesn’t present itself on the hospital’s system three hundred kilometres from home. I give them the number from my phone contacts. They let me keep the wheelchair and bring me an ice pack for my now elephantine ankle. 

Three quick X-rays and the wait begins. Jury finalisation for Trump’s trial is on the small TV screen suspended from the ceiling. The reporter says it has been hard to find anyone without strong preconceived views. I exchange superficial remarks with a thin woman cradling her wrist. ‘I fell off my bike yesterday evening’ she says. ‘I slept with my wrist like this’ she gestures holding it gently to her chest. It is mid-morning and the waiting room is almost empty. That changes over the next three hours as more injured and unwell trickle in. 

Self explanatory

A woman whose name is almost a homophone of mine gets called and I optimistically ask to be wheeled up. Our lunch host returns my call. ‘We’ve just eaten the lasagne and the apple crumble and feel guilty’ he says and wishes me a speedy recovery.

In the consult room the lanky red headed registrar asks me to recount what happened. I do, concluding on the note that I hope it is just a sprain. ’It is broken’ he counters and shows me the image of my fibula with its clean horizontal fracture. He tells us where there is a coffee cart for my husband to get us drinks while we wait for an orthopaedic surgeon to give a ruling. They’re operating so it will be a while. I get chatting to the thin cyclist with what does turn out to be a broken wrist who is waiting to get it set. She is depressed about her general health and talks fatalistically about the future. She doesn’t have a phone so we send her boyfriend a text giving him an update on her progress. The lanky registrar returns and catches my husband trying to look at my x-rays on the laptop and chides him. ‘It’s a breach’ he says as he might see other patients’ records. I apologise and he is cordial. We develop a rapport as I tell him we’re in town to see a show that evening and comment on his striking colouring. He says he’s used to it, that strangers would come up to him and ruffle his hair when he was a kid. 

There’s another hiatus. A nurse checks my blood pressure (still a little elevated) and temperature (normal) again and I drink my take away tea. I brave the unisex accessible toilet relying on my husband to direct the wheelchair to both the loo and the hand basin. That occupies a good ten minutes. Eventually the Registrar comes back and says he’s shown my x-rays to one of the orthopaedic team now. They’ve given the go ahead for me to be fitted with a cam boot and crutches and to be discharged. I learn that he originally trained as a physiotherapist but found the work dull. I remark that he must certainly now get variety in ER. He enjoys it he says. He chooses a medium cam boot and adjusts the crutches to my height then drills me on how to walk with them. I am allowed to place some weight on the foot. ‘Bad foot, crutches, good foot, bad foot, crutches, good foot’ I repeat the mantra out loud and he watches me take a turn about the corridor.

It’s a Saturday and no-one at the hospital back home can take a referral so I need a hard copy discharge letter and treatment plan. While we’re waiting for them the bike rider and I introduce one another properly and chat a bit more agreeing it has been nice to keep company on and off for four hours. I ask my husband to take our photo which we send to her boyfriend and post on Facebook dubbing ourselves ‘The Fracture Sisters’. 

The Fracture Sisters

We leave with the paperwork and a prescription for some strong pain killers which we get filled en route to the guest house. The adrenaline carries me through enough to joke with our hosts who are most solicitous bringing me a footstool and another ice pack. They recount their own experiences with fractures on holidays – a smashed sacrum from falling off a trail bike and a shattered wrist sustained while tugging at potential firewood. My story – tripped while shopping – feels distinctly bourgeois in comparison. 

Although I have missed two thirds of historic Millthorpe and lunch with our friends I have been treated royally by hospital staff and our hosts and had a few laughs with the other ER patients. I will rest now and be able to go to the theatre this evening.

Looking back on the track...

Twice before I have blogged about the year that was - events past & lessons learnt. My most recent post The Ballad of Beryl was the culmination of shared conversations and emails and a tribute to an extraordinary woman. Since then, I have been considering what to write. Nothing specific came to me with the same sense of urgency or purpose. Of the various ideas and themes I had jotted down throughout the year I had only been inspired to develop a few. Then, earlier this week I trawled though a year’s worth of diary entries and photographs taken during 2022 to see what stood out.

I found much worth recalling …

January

Day trip to Adelong with my sister in searing heat. Looked at the falls and gold works.  Photographed them and a mural in town depicting youths clambering across Kurrajong Hill personified as the head and face of a (presumably) Aboriginal man, and up the edge of a conveniently placed air conditioner vent.  The imposing Royal Hotel with its Victorian leadlight and cedar staircase, cream and terracotta woodwork and wrap around balcony wasn’t serving lunch. With few other choices we opted for the Adelong Services and Citizens Club. The club’s exterior is a marriage of Edwardian bank and early 20^thC cinema architecture but the 1970s wood paneling and formica of its interior welcome you in to try its ‘Chinese & Australian Meals’. We had fish and chips and a Thai beef & prawn salad.  Just outside the club stands a lone digger statue and roll call of the fallen. A war memorial is, as Peter Sculthorpe so poignantly evoked in his autobiographical composition, at the heart of almost all small country towns.

The Adelong mural subtly incorporating elements of the built environment

In 2021 our writers’ group was approached by a media company as a source of articles about items of local interest. I produced a piece about Janine Middlemost and the charming quirky clothes she designs, makes and sells in her eponymous shop. The company rejected it as being an ‘advertorial’ so I expanded it and posted it to this blog as Material Comforts on 3 January 2022

My daughter and I went to see a local production of Mama Mia and were hugely impressed with its quality. One of the nurses from the blood bank we’re friendly with was in the chorus, eschewing her usual dancing roles pending a hip replacement.

Our dog Stella had 2.5 kg tumour successfully removed from her abdomen.

February

Animatronic dinosaurs came to the Wagga Showground. I was more than compensated for an un- scintillating hour of my time by parlaying the experience into a poem that went over very well at the open mic.

March

Visited Canberra to see the Jeffrey Smart exhibition and stayed with husband’s friend-since-high-school and his partner. Their new poodle pups Yin & Yang and our ageing greyhound X got along famously. They gifted her their latex squeaking pig on our departure. Wagga celebrated its second Mardi Gras unhampered by the district’s grasshopper plague (perhaps grasshoppers don’t like platform shoes and lycra).  My husband and Stella rode on the SES float and our daughter performed hula hoop routines in the parade. I felt very proud. Junee Museum held an open day with blacksmithing demonstrations and country music covers. The museum is located in the Broadway Hotel (built 1914) whose interior boasts art nouveau pressed metal ceilings and walls of gleaming green tiles interspersed with floral and garlanded decorative ones. We bumped into retired school teacher Brian Beazley whose wood working skills, ukulele playing and bush ballad renditions are renowned throughout the Riverina.

Decorative elements of The Broadway Hotel, Junee

April

Already a veteran of standup comedy with her own hula hooping coaching and performing business, our daughter, Hooly Dooly made one of her occasional forays into legit theatre portraying a fairy in Midnight Dream, local impresario Stephen Roots' country and western flavored adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another theatre highlight was Geoffrey Atherden’s Black Cockatoo at the Civic, a compelling account of how a group of activists restores the story of First Nations cricketer Johnny Mullagh to the national consciousness.

Our son visited Wagga and I drove back to Sydney with him. During my visit we took the ferry to Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden which lived up to its reputation and enjoyed a late Lavender Bay lunch.  My knowledge of and capacity to tolerate Sydney roads has dwindled and I got lost several times driving out to meet friends for dinner at Sydney Rowing Club. It was a public holiday and the place was quiet but the staff still didn’t seem inclined to wipe down the bar. Consulting the wine list it seemed that any choice we made would be a ’sticky’!

Determined to keep up my aquatic regimen I went for a swim at the Victoria Park pool. Its cold water and dilapidated change rooms made me grateful for Wagga’s Oasis; however I acknowledge that Sydney Council has considerably more recreation facilities to maintain than Wagga does. I guess THE place for regional visitors to take a dip is the North Sydney Pool (just ask Bridget McKenzie).

The Secret Garden

May

The month began with news of the unexpected death of my wonderful former colleague and, in recent years, Facebook friend, Chris Bonney. His funeral was in Adelaide on the 6^th and thanks to the widespread practice of streaming such events I was able to see and hear his send off.  If ever a man was loved and celebrated…

Mona, not the gallery, the ‘community-focused magazine for women who live in regional, rural and remote communities in Australia’ launched its second edition in nearby Narrandera. I had submitted pieces which weren’t used in the print edition but which have since appeared on their blog. It was a catered, feel-good event that served as good promotion for Books On East and East Street Café. On our return to Wagga, the sat nav decided to take the back way and we drove for over an hour and a half on unlit country roads but happily free of encounters with kangaroos.

On 15 May Scott Morrison and his cronies were roundly defeated by the ALP and my faith in Australian democracy was restored.

June

Visited a client in Coleambally (est. 1968 pop. 1,331). We met at the only café in town with no chance of privacy or anonymity. Notable facts about Coleambally: all the streets are named for birds, the water tower is called ‘The Wine Glass’   and is surrounded by a mosaic depicting the town’s short history, giving due prominence to the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator.

Self referential art at the base of the 'Wine Glass', Coleambally.  Can you spot the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator?

Also for work, I got a tour of the Defence Shed and Pro Patria Centre.  The latter is a former convent with an impressive chapel featuring amazing stained glass including a window depicting Indigenous themes. The facility is being adapted to provide a centre for reflection and treatment for local veterans. I was going to write a post about the centre but got stalled so instead wrote a letter to the Daily Advertiser in support of the project.

Claire Baker, a colleague from Booranga Writers whose poems I much admire was a featured reader at the June meeting of the Perth poetry group. As their meetings are streamed I was able to join in. Claire shared the bill with WA poet Gabrielle Everall whose singsong delivery of her graphic and gender disrupting works featuring Severin, a character from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novella Venus in Furs, I am still processing. Claire’s work was polished and poignant.

July

There are possums nesting in the roof cavity above our en suite. They poke out their little pink paws through a hole in the ceiling some times.  Visited Aurora, a laser light show in the Albury Botanic Gardens. Photographed buildings and streetscapes prior. The round trip was tiring – I don’t know how my boss does it twice a week. Also botanical and lepidopterological, was the exhibition Transformations - Art of the Scott Sisters at the Museum of the Riverina in the old council chambers. I hadn’t heard of these 19^thC artists before and loved their work.

Attended performance of Bell Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors so disappointing I devoted an entire blog post to it (13 July 2022).  I participated (by video – I was not well and couldn’t attend in person) a reading of works inspired by Helen Grace’s short films. Mine related to The Immortals.  I have dabbled in ekphrasis exercises in conjunction with the gallery a few times now. I love that I can combine my appreciation of visual art forms with the act of writing

August

Sydney’s Griffin Theatre ran playwright workshops for aspiring local writers under 30 in conjunction with the Civic Theatre. Participants, who included our daughter, did a read through of the finished product. So much talent! It seems the collaboration will continue in some shape or form this year. The Wagga Monumental Cemetery has always been a favourite dog walking destination. On a quest to find the unmarked resting place of my husband’s great great grandfather  (see post 2 October 2022) I was delighted to locate remnant stone work from the Turvey vault, a once impressive edifice in a suburb of Wagga Wagga moved to the cemetery when a road was widened. The panel, sans the dog sculptures which used to guard it, looks remarkably modern for something carved in 1885.

All that remains of the once opulent Turvey family vault

As the suburb becomes more built up it is less usual to see wildlife in the grounds around our house. Kangaroos and blue tongues were frequent visitors when we first moved here. In August a beautiful barn owl alighted on our front balcony and stayed there for hours in broad daylight. A real treat.  August was also when we slavishly practiced the ABC classic choir carol Yerbil With Clarence and videoed ourselves to meet the deadline of month’s end.  Unfortunately we were pressed for time and sent in raw footage containing more than one expletive (uttered when we stuffed up). The radio station, which released the composite video in December, chose not use us in the finished product. I think we need to learn our limitations. Nothing can compete with the nurturing and sustained rehearsal we got singing in Jonathan Welch’s massed community choir in 2016.

Our visitor

September

At the Forum Cinema we saw of Jodi Comer’s tour de force performance in the National Theatre’s production of Prima Facie captured on film. Booranga Writers hosted a workshop by poet Nathan Curnow. Nathan told us that rather than a poem being all about the writer conveying a message, it ‘sets up the scaffolding for the reader to have an experience’ and warned us to ‘beware adverbs’.

Made a pilgrimage to Newcastle to see Peter our artist friend of 25 years plus who was about to celebrate his 85th birthday, to catch up with two friends we have known almost as long (since my early public service days) and to see  my first cousin once removed, Beryl, in respite care. We booked dog friendly accommodation in Merewether and took Stella with us. With her we walked on the beach, visited the Honeysuckle waterfront area and several cafes and pubs. Our landlords kindly looked after her when we went out for dinner.  At the Lock Up gallery we saw eclectic high energy work by Deborah Kelly and at Peter’s lock up (storage unit) we saw his latest work and he gave us a painting of his we’d admired since the days we all resided in Glebe in the 1970s. We came home via Cowra where dogs are welcome in the Japanese gardens. This is the last picture of the three of us together.

Last trip with Stella

October

After several unsuccessful attempts to cultivate nasturtiums from nursey stock we grew them from seed this spring and by October they rioted across the terraces of our garden in glorious saffron and crimson shades and copious fleshy green umbrella leaves. Their profusion framed the area where we laid our beloved Stella to rest when she died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 12^th, a few days shy of her 13^th birthday. We planted Stella Bella day lilies and a tea tree on her grave – they are flourishing.

At the Civic we saw Sunshine Supergirl, Yvonne Goolagong’s life dramatized. If anyone had told me that plays about Indigenous sporting legends would be amongst my favourite theatre in 2022 I would have been skeptical but this and Black Cockatoo were amazing.  Arts journalist/curator Julie Ewington delivered ‘We Need To Talk About Art’ at the gallery. She is a huge advocate of jargon-free unpretentious captioning and artists’ statements.  At The Curious Rabbit our daughter was one of 7 performers shimmying and lip syncing with a satanic edge in Hallowed Queens, a drag show for Halloween. Almost as camp and tremendous fun were David Hobson and Colin Lane pretending to be ignorant of each other’s milieus and then wowing us with the duet from the Pearl Fishers in Men In Tails at the Civic.

November

I turned 66 in November and more than any other gift I wanted a dog back in my life. The day after my birthday we drove to Bethungra to check out a Kelpie X puppy at a refuge called Iron Dogs. Of course we were unable to resist Reilly (now Sheila O’Reilly) and she has joined our household.

Sheila & friend

I sensed that seeing my cousin Beryl in September would be our last encounter. She died on 13th November. Karen James, a Wagga-based fellow family historian and correspondent of Beryl‘s was kind enough to accompany me to Lake Macquarie for the funeral. I could not have asked for a more good-humoured companion and despite the sadness of the occasion we had some lovely outings not least to the beautifully situated local art gallery which was showing the finalists in the Lake Art Prize.

More drag and burlesque were in store at Cabaret Schmabaert conceived by Leeton hoop and flow performer Dizzy Dilemma. The hilarious and sophisticated acts featured deserve a regular showcase. The Civic Theatre turns 40 in 2023 so its season launch was more flamboyant than usual. Jonathan Welch gets his second mention in this post for tricking us into a vulgar spoonerism and getting us to sing nursery rhymes at the top of our voices.

Braddon Snape's Allusive Object winner of 2022 Lake Art Prize

December

Another poet colleague, Joan Cahill, launched her latest collection. I got the all clear after a skin check for melanoma. We made an abortive attempt to see an exhibition at CSU’s HR Gallop Gallery. In the middle of the day the doors were unlocked but the gallery was in darkness and we were unable to find a light switch (I suspect the lights were on a timer and because adjacent class rooms were not in use no-one considered the gallery might attract visitors). What we could discern in the gloom of Donna Caffrey’s, Sam Bowker’s  and others’ work  looked wonderful. I hope we have another chance to see it. Then there was Christmas/New Year with a just manageable amount of food preparation and excessive consumption of the results, lots of cooling off in the pool and, for the first time in 3 years, completion of the ritual 1000 piece jigsaw.

Peter's painting 

So much more I could have included but this has turned into an epic. Happy New Year everyone!

Material Comforts

I recently ‘discovered’ (my daughter had actually been telling me to check it out for weeks!) a newish clothing and accessory shop in Wagga Wagga called Middlemost. It is named for Janene Middlemost the entrepreneur/designer/maker whose business idea it is. I wrote a piece for a local news site about her venture and designs which are deliberately eclectic and postmodern, incorporating vintage and salvaged materials, such as tea towels and furnishing fabrics not originally intended for use in clothing.They include those wonderful souvenir map and calendar style tea towels and scraps of geometric, floral and children’s designs spanning several eras.

One of Middlemost's delightful garments (image source their website https://www.middlemost.com.au/)

What is it about this aesthetic that appeals to me – and many others - so much? The nostalgia aspect of ‘retro’ is obvious for those of us who remember the styles of past eras, but how do we explain why people not around when ‘flower power’ and Gordon Fraser greeting cards were in their heyday still rejoice in items that use or evoke these styles? Of course good design will endure, or be rediscovered regularly. As a William Morris fan I may be biased, but I don’t think his designs have ever experienced holus bolus rejection, even in the face of staunch minimalism. Of course art nouveau and Liberty’s enjoyed a huge revival in the 1970s but they are still regularly rediscovered and introduced to new audiences. Going rural in 2014, I was surprised to discover that shirts using Liberty’s fabrics are frequently paired with moleskins by ladies of the squattocracy! 

Liberty shirts (image source http://fashiongear.fibre2fashion.com/)

The old ‘I wouldn’t hang it on my lounge room wall’ test about whether a piece of art is something you could live with has some validity when it comes to choosing the patterns and motifs we use for decor or wear. I was shocked once by a Facebook post of an affluent middle class family sitting down to dinner in front of a reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica. I didn’t think ‘wow, how edgy’ - rather I was unsettled that a work commemorating fascist atrocities could provide a back drop for the evening meal. Unless you live in MONA it is usual to want to feel a degree of comfort with your furnishing and fashions. Though personally I wouldn’t eschew all of that gallery’s holdings, Judith Lucy’s labia would be welcome on my walls! 

So what makes retro comforting? Is it possible to feel nostalgia for design trends that pre-date your existence? As a child I had a particular aversion to a teacup of my grandmother’s depicting a deep burgundy coloured rose in a hyper naturalistic lush style, a kind of Gothicised version of Royal Albert Country Roses (which I also dislike). I called it the ‘headache’ cup. Setting aside that I may have been rather neurotic, I found the motif depressing, it did not provide me with the pleasure I derived from my grandmother’s few pieces of art deco crockery with their sunny yellow, linear designs and from the cheerful fabrics mum chose for our clothes. A dress featuring golliwogs as jack-in-the box figures waving flags is embarassingly the only one preserved in a photograph.

The offending frock (author's family photo)

As the 1960s progressed, mum selected fabrics in the colourful and floral designs that characterised the decade and I happily embraced the style. She made we three sisters corduroy pinafores with tiny floral patterns in three different palettes: autumn/mauves/blues. I had a ‘twist’ dress in an emerald green striped material, with a deep ruffle around the hem that swished when I danced at birthday parties. A PVC ‘flower power’ mac with a matching hat became the most high fashion component of my pre-pubescent wardrobe (and of any other phase of my life since). I used to pray for rain so that I could wear them. I treasured my pyjama case doll with her woollen hair sprouting from a mop cap and saggy (when not stuffed with pyjamas) body of paisley fabric.

Apart from these playful aspects of 60s fashion, prehistory and Egyptology influenced our home décor. We had a wastepaper bin featuring a photographic reproduction of bison from the Lascaux caves and wallpaper in the loo depicting scantily robed female dancers and musicians based on a mural from the Tomb of Nebamun. Surely their copyright-free status was not the only attraction of these designs. 

Lascaux bison on a wastepaper bin (source https://www.worthpoint.com/). We should have hung on to it - they're collectible now!

Long before I came to understand cultural appropriation my family had place mats with Aboriginal designs on them and I baffled my teachers by using the words ‘bunyip’ and ‘dugong’ in my compositions.  I wasn’t much more enlightened in the 1980s when I copied turtle totems for a screen print design. But with hindsight the Jindyworobak movement thought 'progressive' in the 1940s, is being reassessed as naïve and even complicit in misinterpreting and exploiting Indigenous culture. 

Other motifs and patterns encountered from childhood to the more recent past that continue to evoke powerful associations and, to borrow a phrase from Marie Kondo, ‘spark joy’ are Beatrix Potter’s and Molly Brett’s anthropomorphic animal characters, Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies, Arthur Rackham’s and John Tenniel’s illustrations to Alice In Wonderland, E. H. Shepherd’s to Winnie the Pooh and Harmsen van der Beek‘s to the Noddy books.

The Horse Chestnut Fairy, Flower Fairies of the Autumn, Cicely Mary Baker (source https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/)

While I was rather blasé about the Theban Necropolis–inspired wallpaper in our lavatory, I responded with awed delight at wallpaper in the bathroom of a house our family considered buying. Pink flamingos grazed for krill amongst green reeds on a black background. It was the chic-est thing I had ever seen and I wanted my parents to choose that house. But while I quite like that colour combination to this day, I wouldn’t swoon sentimentally if I saw the design reproduced now - it was hopelessly kitsch! 

As Cole Porter observed, Whistler's mama and Inferno's Dante remain 'the top' whatever the vicissitudes of fashion! Then some things have such fond associations for us that seeing them again will always elicit feelings of comfort and joy. There seem to be ‘acquired memories’ that enter the canon too. I didn’t discover Florence Broadhurst’s designs or May Gibbs’ gumnut babies until decades after their genesis but they conjure the same reaction in me as my earlier discoveries. Sometimes, however we fail to appreciate the birth of a classic. While I have spent a small fortune collecting pieces of Midwinter’s Spanish Garden design crockery because I adored a cup and saucer in that design I owned growing up, I kick myself for not investing in a complete Villeroy and Boch‘s discontinued Acapulco dinner set in the 1980s. The rebooted version is exorbitant and inferior.

The Acapulco dinner set I wish I'd bought when it was discontinued and being sold on clearance at Prouds in the 1980s (image source https://www.liveauctioneers.com/)

I have saved the overused ‘i’ word, iconic, unil now. For me most of the designs and images I’ve mentioned here are iconic and I would also include Ladybird and Little Golden books, the Michelin Man and Aeroplane Jelly swing girl, those Amsco decals you used to see on nursery furniture, Toulouse Lautrec’s posters and Ron Campbell’s Beatles animations. These things delight in their own right and how much greater the frisson when they are skilfully combined in a nice frock or via my own rather special interior decorating style!

Amsco nursey decal - we had a design like this on our wardrobe (image source eBay)

But does the same effect occur when the style being recaptured or celebrated precedes your own living memory? If my parents enjoyed cave paintings and Egyptian murals, which were slightly before their time, and the Victorians loved a bit of medievalism in their architecture, perhaps we can all enjoy the exoticism of past styles… Maybe a bit of morphic resonance or collective unconscious is at work as well.

An iconic image from Yellow Submarine by Ron Campbell (source https://www.vogue.fr/fashion-culture/article/how-the-beatles-yellow-submarine-colored-pop-culture)