You can still buy Mackenzie's these days. I'm not linking direct to any shops, but the label is still pretty old-fashioned (this version is nicer)

More smelling salts. Boots is still around, obviously. Same logo as always.

Parke Davis still exists, so presumably they're still selling some kind of inhalant.

It's pretty hard to find out if this still exists due to the difficulty of googling the brand name. There is a health company in Rickmansworth bearing the same name but I haven't worked out from their shiny website if they have anything to do with the company that made this product decades ago. Whatever it was, it was really sticky judging from the residue on the bottle.

Googling brings up a few shops still selling this, though I haven't trawled through them all to see if the bottles are new or not. But back when it was a best-selling cure, it seemed to have been used for everything from sprained ankles to tired horses.

Googling for "Paul Bossoney" doesn't bring anything up, so I don't know if the shop still exists. Although I bet if Google thought I was in France I'd at least find lots of people with that name… (stupid filter bubble)

This is what inhalers used to look like before they invented plastic ones. Imagine the horror if it broke when you really needed your medicine!

And lastly for this post of vintage bits, here's an old box of Borgois rouge that my granny used to use. There's still some inside.

And an unopened pack of Gauloises from the 70s that I think must have belonged to my grandfather (he died in 1975). I'm not sure why the logo features Mercury's helmet, although I have an old book on cigarette packaging that might tell me (I shall dig it out and have a look).

More vintage stuff soon.

Jules Borel moved to America from Switzerland and started a business selling watch parts, which is still in business today, although the design of their website is no way near as pretty as this tin (which I now keep pins in).

According to the Science Museum, Holloway’s Ointment "was a popular universal cure for a number of ailments advertised on the pot, including gout, rheumatism, ulcers, sore breasts and a sore head." Inventor Thomas Holloway sponsored the building of Holloway College for the Higher Education of Women, which was later renamed Royal Holloway College (now part of the University of London). I had no idea it had started out as a women's college.

Iodex is still available in India, and according to this article from 2004, some kids eat it to get high, which must be like eating a vaseline and ibuprofen sandwich. Ick.

My granny did a lot of sewing at one point, so she needed a lot of pins. You can still buy tins of Iris Superfein pins with the same design. The tins are pretty big.

Waterman still make pens, and although they don't make the 88 ink anymore, you can buy vintage bottles in mint condition for only £6 from Vintage Waterman Pens. I think the bottles are really pretty.

I couldn't find much information about these, except on some poorly translated French pages (which might just be an example of the filter bubble rather than because there's no information online). According to the French wikipedia page — Rustines have become the generic name, like Hoover, so that might make it hard to find information. Anyway, I like the rounded edges of the tin. It still has some "rustines" inside, but there's no glue. I expect they might be too dried out to patch a puncture, anyway.

Another one I couldn't find any historical information on, but if you do a search for their name you can find hundreds of websites selling their tea. This box is stuffed full of old things from my grandparents' medicine cabinet, including the two ointment pots above, and the bottles in the picture below. I'll save those for another post.

Is that cryptic enough?

This is the envelope. I love the illustration of the woman with the camera. I put the two coins in to show the scale, although they are actually from Weimar Germany. (They're so pretty though! And I didn't have any Spanish coins from then).

Here's the front cover to the photo envelope, illustrated by someone who's signed themselves as "Valor".

Unidentified mountain villages. That looks like some kind of monastery or fort on the right.

These are definitely Barcelona. Nice to see they were fans of Antonin Gaudi, too.

I'm not sure about the rest, but they're probably from Barcelona as well.

And this is what the camera probably looked like.

Anyway, I figured I should say something for all the people who follow me via RSS, because even if the site disappears at least there'll be a post out in the ether somewhere to let you know why. And there's always my livejournal account as a back-up — the RSS feeds directly into it, and it's chock full of archives dating back to before I got around to getting my own website at mondoagogo.com.

It does give me a good excuse to finally get around to the redesign, I suppose.

One comment here suggests that these masks were where the term "quack doctor" originated from, which kind of made sense, except that a search for the etymology of this term brings up more evidence that it originated from the word quacksalver [sic], an archaic Dutch word (spelled kwakzalver in Modern Dutch).

And none of this brings me any closer to the actual real reason why medieval plague doctors wore beaked masks. Does anyone else know?

Also, if you haven't ever read Castle Waiting, I really recommend it.

Do you think he takes in services washes from other superheroes? I wonder what kind of soap he uses; I bet most of those costumes have some serious special care requirements considering what they usually end up going through. Maybe he just uses his super-breath to blow all the dirt out, or maybe he does it by some kind of superstrength running in a tub of hot water. Then he could get Wally West to work some hours, and hopefully with Wally's mind on the work he'd stop whining about how no one loves him because he isn't Barry Allen. Although I hate to imagine the ruckus if Ralph Dibney's costume got shrunk in the tumble-dryer, or if he left the Oreos in J'onn J'onzz's pockets.

Reminds me, I really should dig out my old Giffen/DeMatteis era Justice League comics and give 'em a reread.

Get excited and make things
Eat cake and carry on.
Get excited and make cakes.

Cake is god good.

2. It's mating season for the herons in Regent's Park.
And presumably elsewhere too, but last week there was an RSPB trailer there with telescopes and binoculars to watch them closer. Annoyingly, they closed at 4:00pm so most of us didn't get a chance to watch the birds closer. I did get a couple of photos of one bird who was stalking the people with bread and seed at the edge of the lake. I also managed to get a neat vintage effect to my picture when I was messing around in Photoshop, which I am pleased with.

3. There are no decent sunglasses in the shops at the moment.
I must have tried on at least twelve pairs in several different shops and nothing suited me at all. Maybe I'm just being too fussy, but I don't suit really boxy square frames or completely round ones, either, and I need to have frames that dip a bit over the nose-bridge, as sunglasses with frames that go in a straight line right across the top just look bloody awful on me. I like quite big lenses, as my face is too round for small ones, but not ginormous ones that make me look like an insect. The only trouble is that all the ones with decent-shaped frames are ruined by tacky bling on the sides. I don't want fake gold trimmings and diamante on my shades. I just want a simple, classy pair that doesn't cost a bomb (£10 or less) — I always buy cheap ones because they end up broken or lost all too easily. Suggestions gratefully received, leave 'em in the comments…

4. Sometimes whining on Twitter leads to being invited to fun evenings drinking with lovely people in lovely pubs.

5. There is a cash machine near Borough tube, if you turn left.
(hat tip to the real gent for letting me know)

6. That thing about policemen getting younger is true.
I passed two coming out of Southwark police station on Thursday evening and they both looked about twelve years old.

5. Easter eggs come from Chocodiles.
But we still don't know why it's a rabbit that delivers them.

6. The Lord Clyde is a lovely pub with lovely staff.
It's a proper old-fashioned boozer with a nice range of beers and a back room that we could take over. (Southwark seems to have so many great well-preserved pubs tucked into the most unpromising corners; it's one of the things I miss most about living in Waterloo.)

7. As far as American-style dining experiences in London go, The Diner is preferable to Bodeans.
It's more relaxed and although the prices aren't way cheaper they do seem a bit more reasonable. Plus the cocktails are really good.

8. There is no sci-fi or action movie which cannot be improved by the presence of nuns.

9. In The Loop is very very funny and very very sweary.
First film I've seen in ages where the audience regularly broke out into spontaneous applause at their favourite bits. Peter Capaldi is brilliant — his character is an intensely unpleasant person but gets all the best lines so you can't help but cheer him on, even when he's being relentlessly nasty for no reason. There's a great bit near the end when the camera lingers on him in a beat of quietude that brilliantly demonstrates the hidden depths of his character and the stresses he finds himself under. I was a bit disappointed by James Gandolfini, who seemed a bit half-arsed and never quite filled his character with enough convincing life to escape the fact that he was being played by James Gandolfini. I did have a great time playing "spot the location" though — there are lots of times when parts of the Royal Festival Hall double up for departmental toilets and meeting rooms in Washington, or the United Nations building in New York. The distinctive carpets (designed by Peter Moro) are a dead giveaway.

10. The website for In The Loop is rather good, too.
Although be warned because it has audio which may cause colleagues to look at you funny. Though if you've a sense of humour you'll be laughing so loud they'll already be looking at you funny.