Blood Mushroom

(Not a stunning picture, but enough to prove I'm not making this up!)

In the afternoon, a flock of starlings blackened the branches of the fat trunked ash. I had left my desk to witness the disturbance. The sun shone, and the bird shapes shrieked.

Last night Mr tried his best not to run over a rabbit. It had a poor instinct for car tyres.

Leaves fell to our windscreen, pale in the headlights, whirling ghostly. The world was cold and dark and beautiful, the sky thick with dreams.

This morning we did not go walking in the woods because of the boom of echoing shot. We went to the unturned fields instead, trod badger paths, found an old hedge boundary in a steep neglected copse.

In the coppice I was looking for a mushroom that Boy and I found, growing in a tree base. Light brown, soft, oozing bright ruby dots. At first glance, it struck us as a recent kill site. But then, on second take, the gently sickened awe, to view stigmatic fungus.

Things lately have a strange feel, pushing over the edge of eerie, into a kind of aesthetic macabre. This evening the moon back lit mottled deep grey cloud and made haloes and I nearly drove into the hedge. There's a beauty that can pull the life out of you, not through malice but through profundity.

To view some facts and pictures for bleeding mushrooms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydnellum_peckii