Taking Liberties

A Funny Fungus and Police Drama

Let’s start at the end – like writers do. How exciting! So, there’s a kilo and a half of Durban Poison in the glove-compartment of Jim’s car, and I’m carrying a dustbin-liner of magic-mushrooms. That alone isn’t much to speak of, but the approximately two-hundred uniformed officers of various ranks, about ten squad cars, two or three vans, and even a fucking police helicopter hovering above. This wasn’t part of the plan. Nothing much was in those days, by which I mean my adult life, or at least the start of it.

Oh, and about six police dogs, rabid, snarling, copper-mutts. German Shepherd dogs. There’s a joke there somewhere, but not here.

Every autumn in Totnes, Devon, there’s a party, ‘The Weirdo’s Ball’. Timed just right during mushroom season so everyone – around three-hundred stinking hippies – can get their rocks off and educate each other on the causes, concerns and ultimately the ends of humanity. It’s a load of old bullshit and pretty much just them rehearsing for when there’s a drunk and/or tripping enough female who’ll actually stand near one of these disgusting creatures long enough for them to charm them with the meaningless, pick and mix of esoteric and, well, anything Indian (picked up on a glow in the dark beach in Goa circa ’89) that they’ve built their hideous, pointless lives around, and therefore feel the need to impose on others.

But for the few cocky cunts who had managed to see through this patchouli-soaked and bearded nightmare, The Weirdo’s Ball was quite the laugh, and there was always plenty of skirt to run through the grass with and fuck into psychedelic oblivion whilst trying to remember your name, and listening to the analogue synths and drum beats of the ball’s bands that sound like they’re being played on coloured balloons floating in curved-air. Sexy stuff.

But one has to prepare. While there were plenty of various forms of mushrooms available at The Ball, (flapjacks, tea, honey, dried and powdered) it’s better to have your own stash rather than risk having to actually talk to anyone, especially the aforementioned Goa-casualties who will force you to listen to some story (and I use that word with so much tongue in cheek I look like Stephen Hawking sucking a gob-stopper) about celestial patterns, Inca burial sites, and how they somehow relate if you squint and, well, are A Bit Stupid®.

It’s also the start of a new term, so three of us burned down to Devon from London in Jim’s (mum’s) car. A lot of Jim’s things (ideas, opinions, politics, neurosis, money) were his mum’s. No dramas though, better than the train, and he was pretty good company considering. Stuart was also there: Nondescript Humanoid™, few of his own opinions, just kind of adapted to the people around him. Continued to do this for the next ten years until we finally – and thankfully – fell out. And now he’s a Corbinista. No surprises, some people are just waiting to be told what to think.

With nowhere to stay until term started proper in a week or so, we broke into the art-school halls of residence. We kept the lights low, crept about, and ate Jim’s (mum’s) food whilst planning a trip up to Dartmoor to grab a load of mushrooms for the ball. The kilo and a half of Durban Poison in the glove-compartment was how I paid for art-school (well, with that, my political sanity, and ideological hymen) but remember that – because as you already know, with hundreds of coppers sniffing about – a kilo and a half of weed plays a part in this tale.

The autumn term was always symbolic and emotional to me. My dad had died in the September before I left home for my first art-school. Death, leaving home, starting different art-schools and Universities, leaving my first love behind (again) – and mushroom season; autumn was touched with melancholia, doused in leaving and arriving, loss and gain. It became part of my annual cycle and laden with vertiginous, unresolved, and chemically confused contradictions. You can’t avoid such things in the English autumn, the environment forces it upon you.

On bellies full of microwaved cheese-pasta, Jim, Stuart, and I got in the car and zoomed up to Dartmoor, wrapping up a few joints on the way to smoke during the harvesting.

At this stage it’s worth nothing we looked like twats. I had dreadlocks down to my shoulders, a penguin suit jacket with something stupid written on the back in purple paint (OK ‘something stupid’ doesn’t cut it, I know exactly what it said “Don’t Panic it’s only Samsaric’ some hocus-pocus Tibetan Book of The Dead reference to the beginningless cycle of birth and death – but really just tripping tripe), army fatigues and boots to finish the look. Stuart’s sartorial aesthetic was similarly sourced, but without an eye for style, the look suffered. The difference is perhaps best summed-up from another friend, who once commented how I looked like some psychedelic Action-Man and Stuart like an extra from Dad’s Army. Jim was long, straight, hair, jeans, nice jumper, wooden beads, coloured wristbands, and pink Converse bendre pumps. A student.

After about thirty minutes driving up onto Dartmoor, we pulled into a small parking area. Not another soul or vehicle to be seen. We sparked up our joints and set off down the hill, looking for the valley that had yielded so well the previous year, although in truth not really sure we were anywhere near it. Dartmoor is without doubt beautiful, but it’s a repeated beauty – not like a tessellation (not yet anyway) it just all looks the same, and a year is a long time. At art-school it’s eternity in an hour.

The Durban Poison was good. A land-race strain the likes of which are largely forgotten in the world of selectively bred cannabis. The sportswear-clad THC zombies rotting in their mother’s back rooms wouldn’t know a land-race even if you told them, because everything you tell them goes in one ear and back out of the same ear should their mother call up the stairs and startle them into a rare and unwanted movement. I’m sure they’ll grow out of it. No, I am not.

We were soon happily strolling through the ankle-high grass grabbing bunches of psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms, more commonly known as liberty-caps (after someone’s hat, apparently) or even more commonly known as magic mushrooms, because they’re hallucinogenic. (Note: Magic is rarely, if ever hallucinogenic. Stupid hippies). They’re quite strong though, in small doses of around thirty, it’s a giggle and a few visuals. In worthwhile doses of around a hundred you’ll be wondering who tattooed the grip of your Clarks school shoes all over the sky, whilst watching the skin on the back of your hand breathing in various colours. They’re not ideal though, I was far more an LSD kind of guy. LSD will change you as a person. It will take what you already know and give it back to you in a way you couldn’t have possibly understood without it. It also lasts a lot longer, around ten hours with the peak being about five of those. Mushrooms only last about five hours with the peak being about two. They also make your guts churn, making you need a shit, which smells like and feels like fungus coming out of a hole in your bum. Because it does and it is. Mushrooms are like an advert for LSD, and LSD is like an advert for itself. No surprise the sixties invented postmodernism.

Youth wasn’t wasted on these fine young men. We were having an absolutely wonderful time, a bright sunny autumn morning, picking handfuls of mushrooms, filling bin-liners with them and sharing another joint or five as we went. At some point we decided to sample a few of our wares. And then a few more. And then a few more. Jim said, “Ideally, we should wash the mushrooms first or you can get some kind of stomach bug.” Probably the most interesting thing he said on the entire trip. And it was still ignored, even by him. And he had a bottle of water he carried around he could have cleaned them with. Imagine having the ability to carry out your own advice and not taking it? It was probably his mum’s.

In about thirty minutes we were a giggling, confused, wandering mess; a thrice of idiocy. I remember at one point looking into my bag of wet grass and mushrooms and hearing a Cuban monkey orchestra tuning up their anvils. Oh well, probably time to get back to the safety of the car.

Stuart said something on the way back up the hill about the world not being “about the usual loop theory, but more concerned with a sense of evacuation and skill-sharing”, and I thought it a good idea to mention Jim’s (mum’s) car was surrounded by about two-hundred coppers, and assorted vehicles. It was also at this point I noticed that sound I’d been hearing for the previous five minutes - which I assumed was the air breathing - was actually a police helicopter hovering directly above the car park. I think that is probably the air breathing in a way. In a way.

What to do? Three teenage dossers, students, ne’er-do-wells, tripping balls, carrying bin-liners packed with mushrooms, with their faces contorted into that look of terror particular to hallucinogens when things go wrong, staring into what appeared to be the biggest drugs-bust Devon had ever witnessed. “Mushrooms are legal, right?” said Jim, which they were, then, as long as they weren’t in any way prepared, like dried or conserved in honey or the like. “Yes” I answered, feeling pretty good again. It was at that moment I realised the kilo and a half of Durban Poison in the glove-compartment of Jim’s car wasn’t legal. It was far from legal. It might sound strange to the modern-day slap on the wrist when caught with a bag of weed stoner, that back then in the late 80s, a kilo and a half was a problem. A quarter of weed was a problem. My art degree and confidently self-predicted blossoming into the next great artist was suddenly very much on the line. The bags were covered in my dabs, and only my dabs. It was mine. It was mine and so would be the sentence. All they’d need to do was prove it was a commercial operation and I was in real shit. It was at that moment I realised the set of digital scales and my book of prices for different weights which were also in the bag, was all the proof they’d need. Balls. They do look silly in their funny costumes though, the police.

“What are you doing, mushroom picking?” said one of them, a ranking officer judging by his flat-styled hat, stripes, and tasteless moustache. And standing there, trying to work out the gravity of the situation, and failing, but knowing it wasn’t good, “Picking what?”, I said.

The back doors of a van opens and another – like there wasn’t enough already – ten or so police climb out. And then I notice a canteen. What the fuck is going on here? Four coppers are drinking tea and smoking cigarettes by a mobile canteen. They’ve bought a bloody mobile café? And I can smell bacon too, the copper who’s asking us if we’re picking mushrooms is eating a bacon sandwich. This is the weirdest bust I’ve ever known.

James and Stuart didn’t look so concerned. Stuart was distracted by a strap on his jacket and was having quite the laugh trying to work out what it was for, and James was doing some kind of breathing exercise, raising his arms out to the side for an inhalation, then exhaling “Ooosh!” as his arms dropped down. The Durban Poison wasn’t there’s after all, so it was understandable they were just tripping.

“Seems a bit over the top for a few mushrooms?” I said, (hearing my voice echo back to me and sounding totally unfamiliar) while gesturing to the swarm of police, vehicles, helicopter, canteen, camera crew. Camera crew? “Oh, don’t worry about us” said one of the other coppers just as I noticed a bloke dressed in baggy jeans and hoodie, peeling the police stickers off the side of a van. “We’re filming.” And they were. And as soon as he said it, reality shuddered a little and it was clearly – obviously – a shoot. He even said what it was for, Inspector Morse or something, I can’t remember that detail as my entire future came back to me and filled my heart with a joy I hadn’t quite realised had completely left me until it returned. It was like coming back to life before you knew you were dead, which I told the ‘coppers’ and which they ignored. I think one frowned, actually.

We walked through the hordes of police actors, James at one point ruining everything by suggesting it might be a double bluff, but that didn’t last for too long. Things he said were much like that, but I did notice it particularly apparent when tripping. We got in the car and I checked the glove compartment. All good, still there, and we drove back to Totnes at about 15 miles an hour listening to Boney M on the car stereo and finding it rather intriguing.

The End

Chris Dangerfield

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