Theme gardens

I regularly walk past an undertakers on my way to a newsagents. Regrettably this does not engender thoughts of mortality and serious contemplation on the brevity of existence. I am usually thinking about the gossip, or little bear, or whether that car is going to slow down before it hits the traffic lights - normal stuff, but less likely to have a moral uplift.

A few days ago, however, after I had marvelled at the number of hips on their wild roses, I noticed some toadstools on their lawn.

I am not very good at toadstools. I buy mushrooms from the supermarket. I just about recognise the red toadstools with white dots. However, these toadstools were quite small but definitely black. They are real toadstools - I have watched them grow and wither, but I can't help feel that having black toadstools on the lawn of a funeral parlour is good practice. I think it perhaps doesn't set the dignified and compassionate tone that I am sure that the funeral parlour would like to set.

I am also confident that quite a few Goths would love to have black toadstools on their lawn and would happily transplant any available.

Well, I don't feel up to suggesting to the funeral parlour that they should sell them on ebay. Perhaps I ought to do a late night swoop - black toadstools, from a lawn of a funeral parlour, gathered at midnight in clandestine conditions. I wouldn't really do that, but I can imagine that there would be a (very odd and specialised) market out there.