Yesterday afternoon I decided to join a 'Fungus Foray' in St Michael's churchyard. I think my interest was piqued by recently finding a very fine Fly Agaric growing up against the wall of the church hall (not St Michael's) around the corner. It was doing very nicely and the top was opening and spreading when someone came along and kicked it to pieces, as is the British way with fungi (in other countries they're more likely to fetch a basket and start gathering, though probably not the Fly Agaric). In the churchyard some thirty or forty people had gathered, many of them armed with field guides, and, after a short talk by the mycologist in charge (a woman, so presumably spared the 'fun guy' gags – though 'fun gal' has possibilities...), the group set off in a body to see what they could find. After twenty minutes they were still gathered around a nearby tree stump admiring some Sulphur Caps, while I hovered on the periphery, already beginning to think this was all too serious for an inveterate dabbler like me. Just then I noticed a Speckled Wood flying off along one of the woodland paths (this churchyard, said to be the largest in England, is also a semi-wild nature reserve) and I followed it, leaving the mycophiles to their fungal fun.
I was lucky, not only in spotting the Speckled Wood – a late flyer, probably my last of the year – but in happening upon a clump of Larkin family gravestones in among the trees and shrubbery. I've found them before, but ever since they have proved strangely elusive, and despite many wanderings in the churchyard I have never again, since I first saw it, found the headstone of the poet's ancestral namesake – the one that gave the young Larkin such a turn – or the decidedly plain grave of his parents. Next time perhaps...
It wasn't the last Speckled Wood – there was one in the garden this morning, looking very fresh, which suggests there might be more around.
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