CORAL FUNGUS.

It's been a quietish week but I have had a couple of outings. On Wednesday I went to the Vape shop and got a new tank and a load of spare coils. I replenished my nicotine liquids and enquired why they only came in little 10ml bottles.........the tank on the machine only holds 2ml. Not enough to last the day out if one is working....A bloody EU dictat apparently. Tobacco roll up stuff now has to be sold in large quantities. Barking mad they are.
This is the problem when you get a country with almost as many government employees as proper folk. There is nobody to phone up and annoy. They can hide behind muzak whilst you wait for the correct idiot or press random numbers. The useless blighters have to justify their time, the only blessing is they don't seem to work too hard or for very long. 
We are getting regular visits from some department of the environment people wittering on about the free range pigs. The pigs are very happy here, farrowing in a bed of bracken of the sows choosing and for the most part looking after themselves. Jock does pop a wee tent over her whilst she suckles her issue, to my mind perfect husbandry. They do dig the ground up......It's what pigs do unless you get the Asian ones which just graze like cows and sheep. The really young ones can escape through the new fencing but do no harm. Little tinkers are the very devil to catch....It could become an Olympic sport to rival beach volleyball. Be much better and the little pigs would love the attention of nubile young ladies. There seems no reason to catch them as they go home on their own come nightfall. It would be good to get some beef cattle but if we had a wet winter and had to fetch them in and then slurry spray.... Then imagine the townies that are frightened of cows. A terrifying beast is a bovine unless it is chopped up and shrink wrapped by someone braver. Viscous things akin to a tiger are cows. They wouldn't hurt anyone unless provoked. I'd be tempted to fire the Vac tank up when the council inspector is inspecting, that would be fun. No CAP Grants here as they are more trouble than they are worth. The government don't like that either but are quite happy to allow Halal slaughter. Horrendous that is but we must be tolerant of Islam and their centuries old habits. Why? We have grown up about time they did or bugger off.
Thursday we drove down to Morcambe, it's a suburb of Lancaster. We came back with a new farm truck, a beautiful Toyota Hi-Lux. Stunning it is. It needs the load bed beefing up a bit so that we can carry a big diesel tank and the odd small excavator bucket and ripper tooth but I'll get some snaps when it's done. Morecambe is about four hours away and it was a long days driving. I ought to work for the government I could have had today off fully paid as flexi-time.

This morning on our wander I noticed some beautiful Coral Fungi. After a breakfast and yet another drool over the new truck I went out and got a few snaps.

I still haven't got my fungus book back so will content myself and you with Coral Fungus. I seem to recall there are at least half a dozen of the things and yellow ones to boot. Not sure that even the book would help. Most of these are edible and Lesley used to know which ones, a proper grown up mycologist. She baked them in a soft Scottish pancake thing one night and I survived. I remember that she cooked them off in butter then rolled all the crap out before incorporating them in the batter. I can remember enjoying them but I was a big fan of hers at the time. Still am but the feeling wasn't mutual. She hated the stink of diesel...I seem to recall I had other faults but had switched off by then. I guess that tuning out was one of them.
Have fun.