Homage to a photographer

First port of call today was Dimbola Lodge Museum, a mere hundred yards from B and M's house, where we are staying. B and M are both involved in the campaign to re-organise the museum and make it a major tourist attraction. B gave us a guided tour of the old house, which narrowly escaped losing its links with its past, having fallen into disrepair and been used as a 'flophouse', before being bought and restored in the mid-1990s.

The photography on display was remarkable: not just Julia Margaret Cameron's incredible portraits of her contemporaries, but also a temporary exhibition of Dorothy Bohm's work, and some recent polaroids by Patti Smith! There was also a room devoted to the Isle of Wight festivals, featuring images of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. I was tempted to blip a poignant B & W poster of the festival, featuring a heavily pregnant girl in a short dress, standing against a backdrop of tents, but it would have been a photograph of a photograph.

Then again, there were many other photographs that I could have photographed, but the light was bright and many were framed behind glass, so reflections were a problem. In the middle of this rambling house was a reconstruction of Julia Margaret Cameron's bedroom, which I found curiously moving, so I have chosen this as my subject.

The silver-backed brushes are familiar to me from my grandparents' generation, but the dressing table and mirror sparked memories of sitting in front of my mother's dressing table in Ireland, when I was just a few years old. Hers was a kidney-shaped table, topped with glass and covered by a green chintz skirt, as was once the fashion.

My sisters and I would sit beside her and watch her powder her face and apply her make-up, watching the transformation from everyday Mummy to elegant Dublin lady. There were drawers full of costume jewellery, which we loved to try on, and because this was the 1960s/70s, a wig in a box, which I never remember being worn, except by us children or once, when we played a trick on a neighbour, by a pointy-busted tailor's dummy called Mrs Form-o-Matic. Whatever happened to her?

I would like to say that some of this feminine elegance was passed down to me, but grooming is not something I've ever excelled at, apart from a brief period in my teens and twenties, when spiky hair and makeup dominated my waking hours. However, I may have been influenced more than I knew by the cut glass bottles of perfume. How we begged to be allowed to try them! The scent, when sprayed, offered a passport to a sophisticated adult world. I loved to be kissed goodnight by my mother before she went out, with her make up, cape (yes, really!) and cloud of perfume wafting around her. Later, in Scotland, she wore Elizabeth Arden fragrances, but, strangely for me, I do not recall the name of her Dublin nights perfume. The city smelled of fish, the river Liffey, and the Guinness brewery, so I doubt if any perfume was ever called Evening in Dublin!

Later, my mother and I both became aromatherapists. At home, I have a wooden chest of drawers as my dressing table, covered with candelabras sporting necklaces, intricately carved boxes for earrings, and an assortment of face and body creams, some of which I've made myself. It is, however, the simplicity of Julia Margaret Cameron's dressing table that I like, so maybe it is a sign that I need, literally, to get my house in order.