Mushroom Madness

This week's subject of fascination is fungi...

It's that time of the year when the possibility of foraging in the forest and finding food for free is a fabulous one (didya like all those Fs?). There is a likely woodland just down the road. But in the interests of not poisoning myself and other loved ones, I thought I'd better find out a bit more before I ventured into the woods (this is all sounding a wee bit Hansel & Gretel). Fortunately, help was at hand, in the form of enthusiastic mycologist Gordon Rutter, running a course this weekend at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

An hour of slides, showcasing weird and wonderful specimens from the fungi kingdom, and then it was off to the forest for a bit of a foray. I was quite delighted to find a common stinkhorn (phallus impudicus) - can you guess what that looks like? In the East, they are sold dried in markets, as aphrodisiacs. We also found a very pretty Fly Agaric (they're red with white spots, very Noddy & Big Ears, and also, apparently, very hallucinogenic). An old lady in our group decided to take it home because it was "such a nice looking specimen". Another very cool one is the beefsteak, which turns red when you cut it open and bleeds - possibly the only mushroom to spark a murder inquiry!

Moving on to movies, Belleville Rendezvous is worth a look. It's an animated feature by Sylvain Chomet, very French, very funny (in a laugh-out-loud kind of way), and completely bizarre. For me, the delight was in the gorgeous animation and intricate visual detail. And any film that can withstand a screening at Cameo 3 (tiny screen, sticky floor, smelling more than a little of wee) must have considerable merit. Will be interesting to compare Spirited Away, the other animated feature that's big news at the moment (I can already say I prefer the funky BR soundtrack to the Disney job done on SA).