Midway through my teenage years in the 1990s, I went through an obsessive Victorian phase. My pictures of Kylie and black and white photos of bogan-chic couples on motorbikes were replaced with Pre-Raphaelite prints of the Lady of Shalott and poor, mad Ophelia drowning gracefully in a flower-strewn river. I copied all 80 lines of Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale out on many sheets of paper and hung them across two walls of my room, and my dressing table was a poetic landscape of dried flowers, vintage perfume bottles and green velvet.
For my 15th birthday, I had my friends over for a Victorian tea party-style servants and wait on us. This interest in the Romantic era was no doubt influenced by an international resurgence of Victoriana in interior decoration styles (how we loved cane furniture and dados) and entertainment – was compulsory slumber party viewing. Which is how my dad came to give me , an illustrated hardcover book on the Victorian art of floriography, which came in its own slipcase and was scented with Penhaligon’s Violetta! To start with, this was unusual, considering my dad has only ever given me about two presents in my life (the other time being when my siblings and I were each given a pair of nail clippers at Christmas as a joke). The image of him heading to the art gallery shop in his overalls while on a lunch break from his job at the wharf to buy me a beautiful scented book for my birthday has always stayed with me (have I ever visualised the hours my mum has toted up buying birthday and Christmas gifts for three children over the past 45 years? Shamefully, no).
