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The Ideal Mycologist |
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The Ideal Mycologist will be old enough to remember coal gas, school ink, office paste and
may be even laudanum but young enough to remember plasticine and bubble gum. He/she will
have peeled potatoes, cooked artichokes, cabbage and carrots and been close to harlots,
creosote, rubber and bed-bugs - although not necessarily all at the same time. They will
have prepared babies’ cereals, travelled in badly maintained elevators, composted elder
flowers, rose and poppy petals, sampled sweets, from Snickers and After Eight to liquorice
and aniseed balls. They will have visited the inside of a hen-house, peeled mandarins (the fruit of course), smelt Goat Moth caterpillars, experienced damp and even rotten flour as well as damp linen. They will have tasted ivy, grown perlagoniums, dried celery, used tooth and curry powder, burned horn, drunk cheap coffee, potted peas, cooked with garlic, saffron and basil and neglected the chip pan, whilst using such household products as bleach, turpentine, iodine and cedar oil. They should also recognise a range of perfumes from eau-de cologne to Chanel No.5, jasmine, orange flower water, violets and musk (derived from the anal glands of the male deer). Their noses will have been close enough to the ground to smell damp earth, damp wood, straw, mouse droppings, otter dung and even less savoury items. They should have used nail varnish remover, toured a cellar of old sherry casks and ripe cheese, shared a room with someone having foot odour problems, visited a sow on heat, know how cucumber smells when combined with corduroy, or chicory with liquorice, flour with cocoa and mints with blackberry jam. They should be able to distinguish the smell of stewed apple from fresh, raw and cooked Jerusalem artichokes and fresh coconut from dried. Altogether a well-rounded and experienced personality! And why such skill are
required to become >the< Mycologist? – As Shakespeare wrote; Comparisons are
odorous ( from: Much Ado About Nothing ). Above pictures were taken from the meeting
of NWFG mycologists, 10/04/2004 |
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