how to murder yourself and your family
an accidental step-by-step project guide
I’m a completist by nature, which is a fancy way of saying I like a project. My close friends tolerate this character trait, some even claim to find it ‘charming’ and ‘creative,’ but my children, because they have to live with (often amid the detritus of) my various obsessions, find my projects irritating and tedious in the extreme. This isn’t surprising, children are meant to be embarrassed by their parents’ quirks and foibles, but I’d never considered that their aversion might actually be a survival instinct. However after this week I am now convinced that it is. Allow me to explain by telling you the story of what happened to us this week.
On a recent four-hour hike in the Peak District, where we are staying over half term with friends, I spotted a patch of mushrooms in a shimmering conifer wood. When I then began enthusing out loud about the wonders fungus and limestone soil acidity and wandered off the path to take photos, the boys looked at each other and groaned. Oh god, here she goes again.
I’d be lying if I didn’t state the obvious: Part of what fascinates me about mushrooms is that in addition to being beautiful and highly botanically diverse, many of species of common fungi are as spectacularly dangerous to human life as loaded handguns scattered around the forest. Highly toxic ones (of which there are many) can melt your organs, fold your brain cells, cause rapid asphyxiation, psychosis, paralysis and death. Inhaling their spores can lead to incurable respiratory illness and make you hallucinate for days. For this reason, I knew I should probably just look at the mushrooms, take some pictures and leave them there in the woods untouched, but a project is a project. I was obsessed. I wanted more. And as it, turned out, the Peak District woods were a fungal garden of delights.
I wonder if it’s this same innate foraging impulse that leads us down every wonderful and terrible unexpected path in life, deeper and deeper into the dark unknowable woods of ourselves? The point is, I experienced a kind of bliss state looking for mushrooms in that conifer forest this week and I don’t really regret it — though in light of what happened next I probably should.