Seasonal stories

The wheel turns, autumn approaches and it's that time of year again when elements of the media, particularly the local press, attempt to manufacture outrage and indignation around mushroom collecting in the New Forest with seasonal stories of mycelial mischief. Of course, they're all nonsense, more myth than fact, although that doesn't stop them.  Furthermore, any small issues which may exist the media ramp up and over play. The irony being that if there are any genuine issues in the forest of over mushroom picking or illegal commercial mushroom picking, and I must emphasise that the if is a big if, they're the consequence of the media's fictitious stories in the first place. Stories telling of foreign pickers profiting handsomely, telling how you could get rich selling mushrooms to fancy restaurants and other such silliness. I can't say that gangs of commercial mushroom pickers don't operate in the forest, although I can say that in 30 years of mushrooming in the forest that I've never seen them, and also, that over that period I've not noticed the range and quantities of the forest's fungal communities decline, beyond natures natural rhythms. You know, thinking about it, the myth of the commercial mushroom picker was born of the same family of xenophobic tropes which brought us to brexit. And, like the straight bananas and Johnson's kippers, it was bollocks...foreigners coming over here and stealing our great British mushroom. First they blamed van loads of Italians, that didn't get traction though, most people liked Italians, their culture, wine, food and so on. So, next they blamed the Eastern Europeans, now, they were foreign enough to dislike and so the myth got traction and became accepted, even though no evidence was ever produced.  It was a plethora of stories like these fed to a gullible and inherently passively racist British population over 40 years that assured that when offered a vote, enough believers would vote self harm...what a glorious nation. I despise the narratives and the ideology behind brexit, and those behind the enterprise, though you have to begrudgingly respect the success of their long game tactics...you have to, they did it, their drip drip over 40 years strategy championed in the face of overwhelming logic and evidence to the contrary.  Anyway, mushrooms are coming.