A recipe for disaster

November 17, 2014 Leave your thoughts

One curious thing is that  I’m often stopped by people asking for directions. I first remember it in Barcelona, when a British couple asked me directions (and then complimented me on my English), but it seems to happen pretty much anywhere I go.

Would you eat this mushroom?

Would you eat this mushroom?

Another time in Barcelona a Catalan couple from out of town asked me how to get to Plaça Espanya. At concert venues I’ve been asked to show people where the toilet is. And in Girona recently I was asked if I spoke English and then if there were any squares in which to sit. The list goes on and on, but those spring to mind. And I really have no idea why it happens so often.

However, it was a first last weekend as I was leaving the forest with the dog when a man asked if I knew anything about mushrooms.

I told him I didn’t, but he asked me to take a look at what he’d collected all the same. He had a variety of fungi in his basket, but wanted to know if one in particular was edible.

I repeated that I had no idea at all.

If Mercadona sells them then I presume they are fit to eat and so far that has served me well. Every year a small number of people are take ill in Catalonia after ingesting mushrooms they have picked. You really do need to know what you’re doing, eat the wrong mushroom and it can easily be goodbye for good.

But if I wanted to identify an edible mushroom at the very least I’d want to ask someone I trusted rather than a complete stranger!

Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for disaster? It sure does to me.

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