The beholder's eye

By uniqueandlovely

On the way home from seeing the steam train.......

I took Mr U&L to Shalford Station this afternoon so he could take some photographs of steam train 34046 Braunton pulling a luncheon special through the Surrey Hills.
To be honest I am not usually a great fan of steam trains, but this one was amazing......for a start it was quite late, and the fireman continued to make the engine 'steam' really noisily all the time it was in the station taking on water. I was waiting just above it on a wooden footbridge and it really felt like the loco has a personality all of it's own, a bit like a huge stallion, straining at the bit waiting to streak off across the fields.
When the train eventually moved off the noise and smell was awesome, and I moved just in time to avoid a blast of hot air up my trousers!!!
I thought at this point I had my blip in the bag, but on the way home I noticed a huge stand of Shaggy ink caps Coprinus comatus. These common fungi look like lawyer's wigs, and if harvested young can be eaten, however, they don't keep well as the gills beneath the cap secrete a black liquid filled with spores which in turn autodigests the gills and the cap, turning both to a black slime (hence the name ink cap) , in a matter of hours.
I was really torn, but in the end I just had to blip the ink cap.......there will be more steam trains!

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