When gathering wild mushrooms you must be sure you know what you are doing. Thinking you know what you're doing when you don't really, is as bad as knowing nothing at all and unless you are lucky, could have deadly consequences.
This is a story of two people who thought they knew what they were doing, but didn't. Fortunately luck was on their side and they lived to tell the tale, but it illustrates how spectacularly wrong you can be when armed with inadequate information and too much confidence.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend called John. He's probably still my friend but I haven't seen him for several years. For a brief period we were very close and did almost everything together. We were the same age and had very similar interests. We started university at the same time and took exactly the same courses. We started drinking and explored the local bars and clubs together. We tried to pick up girls together and in the holidays we went hitchhiking round Britain.
One day John and I decided it was time to try magic mushrooms. We had heard a lot about them and, by all accounts, they sounded fairly exciting. We had already successfully tried getting hold of and smoking some hashish a few months earlier and we reasoned that finding some mushrooms would be easier as it didn't involve hanging round people until they decided you were cool enough to be introduced to a supplier. With mushrooms, all you had to do was find out first, where they grew and second, what they looked like. Finer points such as the correct dosage could be dealt with later, once we were in possession of the mushrooms.
We were at a party one Friday night. We were at a party every Friday night but this particular one is of interest as the occasion on which we got our first lead in our search. John came up to me with a big grin on his face. 'I've just been listening to a couple of guys telling a story about a mushroom trip.' he said, 'Do you want to come over and we'll try to get talking to them?' Fifteen minutes later the four of us had formed a small standing circle, holding our beer cans in towards the centre and our cigarettes outside, and were gassing away about this and that. 'By the way,' said John, 'that was a good story you were telling earlier. You know, about the mushrooms. Are there plenty of mushrooms about here, then? We don't really know the area. We haven't been here long.'
'Millions of 'em.' replied the big guy. His name was also John. 'Go down the park and you'll find them.'
'Yeah? Great. Let's take a wander down tomorrow morning. Eh, John?' I suggested, 'Pick a few and take a wee trip. Where exactly would you say was the best place to find them, guys?'
Again Big John was the most forthcoming. 'Try along the edge of the rugby field, under the big trees.' he offered.
'Would that be the edge nearest here? Near the path from the main road?'
'Yeah. You'll find some there for sure.' he assured us. 'Have a good look around there. You'll definitely find some.'
'And how will we know when we've found them?' enquired John. 'What do they look like?'
'You've never done them before? Oh ho! Better be careful boys. Don't take too many. You might not come back.' the short one, Mark, joked, speaking for the first time in a while.
'No problem,' Big John continued. 'You'll recognise them straight away. They've got a kind of long stalk and a round cap with a point. Like a wee pointy hat.'
'Or a nipple.' cut in wee Mark and everybody laughed.
'Yeah, like a nipple.' Big John agreed 'On top. Just like a wee nipple.'
'Are they big?' I asked big John, trying to glean more information.
'No, no. Not at all. Sometimes you find big ones after the rain, but they're usually hard to find in the grass and dead leaves and stuff.'
'They're a sort of creamy colour. Eh, john? Sometimes brown.' added Wee Mark.
'Brown after rain.' replied the big man with authority. 'Cream when they're dry and brown after the rain. That's the difference.'
We filed all this new information away in our heads and got on to talking about other things. Our little circle eventually broke up as we started talking to other people and looking for fresh drinks, but we agreed to meet up again sometime - maybe do some mushrooms together or something.
The next morning I woke John. 'Fancy going looking for mushrooms?'
'It's fucking raining.' he grumbled and pulled the blanket up to cover his head. Maybe he had drunk more than me.
'Oh, come on. It's only a spot. They said it was best when it was raining. Get out your bed. I'll put the kettle on.'
An hour later we were down in the park under the tall oaks and beeches by the rugby field. The rain was light but the wind was strong and the noise of the branches getting blown about above our heads was impressive. The branches were squeaking and creaking and the dry leaves still on the trees made a swishing and crackling sound. The air around us was full of swirling leaves. We could smell the sea on the wind and with that and the sharp cold sting of the drizzling rain, we were soon wide-awake and invigorated. 'Hey this is magic.' shouted John.
'Ha! I told you so.' I shouted back. There was a strip of rough grass between the neat turf of the playing fields and the gravel path which lead to the student flats. It looked the most promising so we started searching there. I was looking in the long grass at the base of an enormous beech tree when I spotted a mushroom. Then another. 'I think I've found some.' I shouted and bent to clear the grass and leaves from around the stem of one. It was about 6 or 7 centimetres tall with a round brown button cap and a thick creamy yellow stem.
'Me too.' said John as he approached, showing off a handful of the same kind of mushroom. 'There are loads of them over there. Do you think they're the right ones?'
'They're brown, aren't they? They said they were brown when it was raining. It must be them. There's no other kind growing around here. Smell them. They smell good.'
'They didn't say anything about the smell.'
'I know, but smell them. They don't smell bad or anything. I reckon that's them.'
'They said they were small, but there's some fairly big ones here.'
'Yeah. They said you sometimes find big ones after the rain. And look, that one's got a pointy top.'
'Some of them haven't. And it doesn't look like a nipple. They said it looks like a nipple.'
'Come on. What's a nipple on a mushroom? I mean, what were you expecting to see? Look. That's a pointed top, isn't it?'
'Okay, okay. I think you're right. I just wanted to be sure. Let's fill the bags.'
It took fifteen minutes to fill two plastic shopping bags. Our new friends had said they could be difficult to spot. Maybe the rain had brought a lot up overnight.
'I think we've got enough.' I said. 'How many did they say we had to eat?'
'Thirty or forty each, they said. They're awful big though, aren't they?'
'They grew big in the rain. They probably meant thirty or forty small ones. Let's use the smallest ones.'
Back at the flat we counted out sixty of the smallest mushrooms. It looked a lot. 'How should we eat them.' I wondered. 'Did they say?'
'No, but let's fry them.' John suggested. 'That's what you do with mushrooms. We can't eat them raw.'
We fried them in butter with a clove of garlic and added a little salt and pepper. They smelled wonderful. Our flat-mate, Pete, wandered into the kitchen and sniffed. 'Hey, something smells good.'
'Mushrooms, Pete. We're cooking mushrooms.' mumbled John. Pete was totally straight.
'Phew. I'm glad he didn't ask to try some.' I laughed. Even after cooking there was a full pan of mushrooms. It was lunchtime and we were hungry, so we got some bread out and sat down to eat. They were delicious mushrooms. Neither of us had tasted mushrooms so good but there were just too many. We couldn't finish them.
'How long do you think we have to wait?' asked John.
'Oh, maybe about forty minutes.' I reckoned. We went to John's room and put on some Pink Floyd and waited. Nothing happened. Even after two hours nothing had happened. 'Do you think we had to eat more?' I asked John.
The next day, on the way to classes, we bumped in to big John and told him the story. 'I don't know.' said big John, puzzled.' I mean, even twenty should give you a hit. How did you take them?… What? You fried them? I've never heard of that. Still, probably okay.'
'Look,' I said, 'Why don't you come down the park and we'll look for some just to check we got the right ones?'
'I don't know. Just now? I can't stay long. I've got a lecture in twenty minutes.' explained Big John.
'You said you don't go to lectures.' John countered.
'I'm not going, but Mark has the same one and I said I'd meet him outside to go for a smoke. Okay, let's go. It won't take long.'
'Yeah. Great. Cheers mate.' we said and the three of us headed back to where John and I had been the previous day. When we reached the spot, John and I slowed down at the stretch of rough grass where we had found the mushrooms. Big John didn't notice and carried on, over the strip and onto the playing field. We ran after him, saying nothing, just glancing at each other quickly. Within ten or twenty seconds big John bent down and cleared a few fallen leaves from the short turf. 'Aha! There you go chaps. Number one.'
The spot was indeed as he had described it. We were standing on the edge of the rugby field and although we were closer to the field than John and I had been the previous day, we were still definitely beneath the huge canopies of the trees. We walked up close to Big John and examined the object he held up triumphantly for our inspection. 'Oh, dear.' said John in a quiet voice. The mushroom was tiny. It had a long thin spindly stem and the little cream coloured cap had what could quite accurately be described as a nipple on the top. Furthermore, fifty of these mushrooms would easily fit into the palm of your hand and could be swallowed in one go, without even chewing them. The mushrooms John and I had gathered bore no resemblance whatsoever to the thing we were looking at.
That night John and I had the first of several trips together. It was great and we laughed as we remembered our lunch of the day before. Much later, when I had learned more about mushrooms and begun searching for edible ones rather than magic ones, I realised that what John and I had gathered that day was actually a highly sought-after species of Boletus, well known for it's delicious taste. We were lucky, but it just goes to show that if you don't know exactly what you are looking for, you can be incredibly wrong, even when you think you are right. Be warned.