Fools Gold...

The other day a car pulled up in the car park, a big sweaty hunting guy dressed in combat gear opened the boot and a crowd gathered to marvel at what he had in his boot...I couldn’t resist...was it a dead body, an animal or maybe a kidnap victim??...I went over to look and sure enough it was quite a spectacle...not quite what I was expecting but nevertheless we were all impressed with his massive haul of freshly picked porcini mushrooms!

Yes, it’s definitely that autumnal time of the year when the flavoursome porcini grow wild and abundantly in the woods. I mentioned this incident to a friend who then told me that his elderly mother had even found some in the woods so that was that...my mind was made up and the next morning I would set off to find my own treasures. Hey, if an overweight sweaty bloke and a doddery old woman can find them then this would be a piece of piss for an old mountain goat like me.!

I’d heard that they grew high in the hills so the following morning I set off with a large bag and a trusty wooden staff to (a) look the part and (b)fend off any cinghiale, hunters or ruffians that might want to steal my ‘soon to be had’ expensive fungi haul. 

I checked I wasn’t being followed and started to climb using small paths, animal tracks and canyons, gaining height and isolation, well away from civilisation and into beautiful leafy woodland, a perfect medium for the large porcini to prosper and grow.

I soon started to see loads of mushrooms...wow...yellow ones, red ones, white ones and even spotty ones but the elusive brown one was nowhere to be seen...I carried on, they must be here somewhere...

...3 hours later and hot and sweaty I had covered a fair bit of ground so I sat down wearily by a large oak tree in order to think my strategy. The problem seemed to be that the colour of these woods were predominantly brown, the trees were brown, the leaves have turned brown, the soil was brown and the bloody mushrooms that I was looking for were also bloody brown so this made the damn things harder to find...so hard that after all this time I hadn’t seen a single one!....I also realised that I didn’t know my Clitopilus from my Stinkhorns so all the mushrooms I had come across I didn’t know if they were edible or poisonous...Shitake!..this was harder than I thought!

I wasn’t going to let this get in the way...I set off again, more determined and with a mental image of me grating Parmesan over a large dish of fresh pasta tagliatelle abundant with fresh porcini later that evening.......Mmmm...can’t wait.

...another 2 hours went by and the porcini count was still at nil...I started to wonder if this was a joke...how could I have come all this way and not found even one?..did they really exist or is it like looking for a three-legged haggis or a tiny little green leprechaun?...by now I was so high I could see the lake below on the other side of the hill so I decided enough was enough...

I took the next hunter’s track and headed back down....what a bloody disaster, I had nothing to show for all my efforts, I was tired, sweaty and getting hungry...my only hope now was that I came across a fat, sweaty smug bloke with a full basket or even better, a defenceless old woman so I could club them to death with my trusty staff and steal their prized porcini....that was the only way I was going to find the bloody things around here!

Today’s track needs no introduction, an indie classic and a timeless groove to enjoy from the Madchester era of 1989. Listen here https://youtu.be/NSD11dnphg0