You know,...

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...I think I might have eaten enough rabbit.
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'Nother day.

Cycled to the tiny but rather lovely Newlands Wood 'twixt Penkridge and Huntingdon yesterday.

I was out looking for a few late boletes to fry up. No luck, but I did find this inedible but attractive bit of coral fungi - 'Golden Spindles', I think, 'Clavulinopsis fusiformis'.

I cycled towards home down the canal path...

...and then stumbled upon my next-door neighbour & the canal boat he's doing up.

I then rode on and had a look round Acton Trussell Churchyard...

(spent a while thinking the stuff you inevitably think in churchyards) & then pedaled home to scoff the last of the day before yesterday's rabbit stew.

Autumn comes to Hubert's herbal windowbox

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Look away, foodies.

Spy Birch Boletes under tree (Birch tree, in fact) whilst cycling into town. Pick them, take 'em home, chop up, fry with butter and add a couple of beaten eggs (try not to think about cholesterol levels), cook till done.

Then what? Serve with exquisite salad of rocket, fine herbs & ciabatta croutons?

Or slap it onto a steaming lake of microwaved beans?



The latter. Yum bum.
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Trump to bankrupt pensioner who argued with him

Molly Forbes challenged billionaire Donald Trump in the courts over the compulsory purchase of her home to make way for his giant Scottish golf course. She couldn't get legal aid and now nice Mr. Trump is trying to force her to pay court fees totaling nearly £50,000 (plus a hefty amount on top of this for 'inconveniencing' him). More here.

Shotguns, trousers, Rugeley and weight gain.

Doing the charity shops in the nearby town of Rugeley yesterday - still after interview-wear - I stuck my head into the tiny, packed-to-the-roof-beams gun shop there and found that there were about a dozen big sheets of cardboard propped up on the floor, each with hundreds of little holes in them. 'I've put on weight', said Ray the owner - and I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about.

'Look - all these are up and left,' he went on, pointing at a sheet of cardboard and tapping in turn each of the quarters around the centre, '122, 76, 20, 53 - see? They're grouping up and to the left.'

'Ah,' I said - I still had no idea why he was talking about weight gain but the numbers on the cardboard at least were beginning to make some sort of sense to me, 'You're zeroing a shotgun?'

'Well...', clearly this idea didn't quite hit the mark, 'sort of...'.

Eventually, he managed to explain it to me. He'd noticed that his shooting had become less accurate in recent years and he'd struggled to understand why. Recently he'd thought that this might be because he'd put on some weight - the stock of the shotgun having to sit differently against his now somewhat chubbier cheek. He'd decided that this had shifted the angle of the gun in his grip and had an effect on the spread of pellets in and around the central target zone.

So he now had to alter his gun so that he was hitting the bulls-eye again. You don't do this with shotguns, I learned, the way you would do with an air rifle, by fiddling with little dials, you do it by altering the way that the gun sits against your shoulder and face. The cardboard sheets were the evidence of the shots he'd taken after making changes to the cheek-piece of his gun; tuning it, in effect, to try and bring the area of maximum pellet density back to the centre of the aimed-for area. He'd finally settled on one set of changes after he'd begun to consistently produce sheets with more balanced patterns.

It was very pleasant to go into a shop and be involved in a conversation like this; he was happy to tell me all about it and clearly chuffed that he'd hit on a way to make his shooting more accurate. I've been doing more shooting practice myself recently - trying to work on accuracy - and so it was great to come across another person involved with the same field of questions and challenges; helpful, in other words, to see that other people have some of the same preoccupations as you do yourself.

Clothes make the man

In the shops today, trying to buy clothes. Can't do it. Can't spend £35 on a bloody jumper. Seems stupid. Jumpers come from charity shops and cost £3.50. Everything else is just wrong.

I have an interview this week and I need - or I think I need - to look like someone who does not spend a good deal of nearly every day sat underneath a hedge; need to show up wearing trousers that haven't had the arse ripped out on barbed wire.

Thing is, charity shop clothing assembles itself in its own good time - it doesn't show up according to a timetable. And a timetable is what I have: 'Look less like a tramp by Friday', is what it says.

The Joy of Ceps

Another day spend 'shrooming. I found some scary-looking, sulphur-yellow Boletes first in a wet & ferny little conifer wood and then, after having pedaled by accident into an enclave of the super-wealthy (lots of signs all more or less saying Achtung Minen!), I paused by the gate on the way out and boggled at a whopping great Fly Agaric.

Before leaving I turned round to cast an eye over the ground beneath a few nearby Birches - and what did I see?

Could that be the holy grail of the 'shroom hunter, the Penny Bun itself? It certainly looked like it - but the size of the thing! I had no idea that they were such giants!

I raced home and (after double-checking it against the 'shroom books) scoffed it tout de suite.

Now, the probably-Birch Bolete I ate the other day was perfectly nice, ditto the Horse Mushrooms and the Parasols, they were surprisingly good - but this! Well, I can see what all the fuss is about, I really can. Fried in butter it was seriously, seriously delicious.

First time on new permission.

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A leisurely stroll across the peaceful acres of my unexpected new permission? Spotting fruitful sites for rabbiting reference whilst taking in the cool, still Autumn evening air?

No. Evil cows from hell chase me, corner me & then force me to flee for my life through a hawthorn hedge - whereupon I drop five foot down the side of a steep bank and am dumped, wild-eyed, leaf-strewn and disheveled, straight into the path of a whippet-thin rural jogger.

'Ah!' I exclaim, 'Hello!'

He swerves a little but doesn't break his stride, 'Evening'...
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