Items · The Medicine Chest

Strange landscapes

In a short story by the writer Alice Munro titled, 'Walker Brothers Cowboy', a young girl joins her father, a fox farmer turned traveling salesman, on his visits to homes in the countryside where they live. After observing her father nearly getting doused with a chamber pot of urine by an unwelcoming customer, he veers off his usual rounds to visit a woman whom she slowly understands to be his sweetheart from when he was younger. Driving back home, she thinks about the events of the day: "So my father drives and my brother watches the road for rabbits and I feel my father's life flowing back from our car in the last of the afternoon, darkening and turning strange, like a landscape that has an enchantment on it, making it kindly, ordinary and familiar while you are looking at it, but changing it, once your back is turned, into something you will never know, with all kinds of weathers, and distances you cannot imagine. When we get closer to Tuppertown the sky becomes gently overcast, as always, nearly always, on summer evenings by the Lake" (Munro 2010: 23).

A letter to Barrie

My dear Barrie, We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot. Hoping this letter may be found and sent to you, I write a word of farewell.... More practically I want you to help my widow and my boy – your godson. (...) I am not at all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a humble pleasure which I had planned for the future on our long marches. I may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march ever made and come very near to great success. Goodbye, my dear friend. Yours ever, R. Scott. (Excerpt from letter penned by Scott to Barrie on 29 March 1912)

Four bruises

Poster designed by film director, Mike Mills. His 2010 movie, 'Beginners', is structured as a series of interconnected flashbacks. Following the death of his father, Hal, from cancer, Oliver reflects on their relationship during the last five years, since the death of his mother.

The Swamp of Sadness

Big Good Strong Hands...

The 1984 film, 'The Neverending Story', features Pyornkrachzark, the Rockbiter, a large creature made of stone. The Rockbiter species are named due to their diet of rocks and earth-based materials. The Rockbiter seen in the film particularly has a liking for limestone. In the novel and the first film, the Rockbiter appears early among the messengers sent to see the Childlike Empress at the Ivory Tower during the Nothing crisis. In the first film he ultimately reappears, encountered by Atreyu. He has lost faith in himself after failing to save his travelling companions from the Nothing, and advises Atreyu to flee.

Soda-Mint (Neutralising)

"Antacid, exhilarant and stimulant. From one to three as a neutralising agent, in irritable and acid conditions of the stomach, dyspepsia, flatulence, etc. They may be swallowed with water, or be powdered and dissolved in water and taken as a draught" (BWC 1925:138).