Derelict Boat

This morning I had a U3A talk at Blakeney, so arrived an hour early so I could go for a walk first. I walked down to the harbour , then out on the marshes to the derelict boat. This is a phone photo put through my ArtCard app to get a watercolour effect. This afternoon I did some weeding / tidying up in the garden.

The U3A meeting should have featured the Sheringham Shantymen, but they had to cancel fairly late on. So Dr Tony Leech stepped in at the last minute to deliver one of his talks entitled Witches and Devils - the darker side of fungi. Tony is so interesting, he leads the volunteering I do at Spout Hills and knows so much about wild flowers, fungi, butterflies - you name it, plus he’s a lovely person and a great and enthusiastic communicator. He has served as Norfolk’s County Recorder for fungi for many years. There are 4,550 species of fungi in Norfolk, omitting the moulds there’s still 2,000 that can be easily seen. We learnt about Witch’s Butter, Witch’s Egg (Stinkhorn), Devil’s Bolete, and Devil’s Fingers. He also talked about poisonous fungi and how it’s very difficult to be sure of identification  (so books often now don’t say if poisonous in order to avoid litigation). Some such as Deathcap are clearly deadly, but others might affect some people but not others, and then there’s Common Inkcap which can cause a nasty reaction if alcohol is drunk within 24 hours of eating it as there’s something in it that inhibits the breakdown of alcohol. He told us lots of stories - some very sad (dogs dying after eating hallucinogenic fungi). There’s one theory that the Salem Witch Trials were sparked in part by a poisonous fungi called Ergot contaminating rye in the area - and women were the ones with the knowledge of plants. There’s so much more I could write, such an interesting talk.