MUSHROOMS

Today was a beautiful late summer's day, so the friends we were visiting asked my wife and me if we wanted to go and pick wild mushrooms in the forest. Now mushrooms are one of those things where I know absolutely nothing, so this was an opportunity not to be missed.

There are lots of different types of mushrooms. Some are yummy, some are bitter, some make you hallucinate, and some are so poisonous that you can die if you eat them. We were looking for Carl Johans and Cancellaras, which my wife had no trouble finding in amongst the tree roots. I on the other hand could find nothing but these large mushrooms which look a bit like miniature spacecraft, and are to be avoided.

Living as we do next to a wood, we have quite a lot of mushrooms at home. The most common variety is a long, thin thing with a hat on, which in Danish is called "the Priest's dick", presumably because it looks like one. It also has a rather nasty tendency to drip black ink all over the place, but I don't know if that is because members of the Lutheran church do the same.

It will not surprise you to discover that Priest's dicks are not be eaten. I will have to chew them up with my trusty motor mower instead.

Walter Blotscher