The fabric of our nostalgia

This morning's A2 in The Age carried an advertisement for The Nature of Things: Relics and Time. Unfortunately, Miss Eagle won't be going. She is hoping and praying to go to WA in May for the launch of ARIDS (as posted below) so will have to minimise expenditure. But Miss E thinks The Nature of Things must be a real experience.

She was particularly enchanted by the photograph (above) on the website of a tablecloth and serviette which have been taken as a theme for this theatrical presentation. Enchanted - because back in the late 60s to mid 70s when Miss Eagle owned a house at 682 Ruthven Streen, Toowoomba (I believe a motel is there now) she decorated with some soft furnishings.

What did she use? This very colour and this very fabric - a hopsack. A circular table was covered with a huge circular cloth. She remembers being down on hands and knees with a pencil tied to a length of string marking the fabric - folded in quarters - with an arc and cutting along the pencilled line to cut a large circle which was hemmed with same colour bias binding. Then there were the serviettes whose edges she frayed. The cloth was worn and went the way of all things long ago. The serviettes lingered on. There may still be the odd one lurking somewhere.

Now to see someone else's tablecloth and serviette in a house long ago in Italy becoming the focus and starting point for a theatrical production in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, which in turn connects nostalgically with a long ago house in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia is remarkable.