AS I have mentioned before, newspaper offices get sent the oddest things, usually from PR companies who are wanting publicity for their clients. These can be everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, although the sublime is in very short supply and even the ridiculous is getting rare. Mundane is now the norm. The items that arrive can be anything from bottles and jars, usually empty, packets of vitamins, pens (useful admittedly), mouse mats, (ditto), and rather silly things like biscuits which usually arrive as crumbs, and big parcels which when unwrapped from their cartons and polystyrene filler protection usually contain tiny fridge magnets or the like. Fine if you really want a fridge magnet which says 'say no to testicular cancer' but not really for everyone. It is our job to look at these things and decide if we can oblige with some kind of write-up, and usually, with a weekly paper, we can't because there seems to be no local angle we can hang it on. So National Condom Week doesn't always get a look in although I can usually dredge up a few lines when it's National Slug Week. The latter, of course, isn't promoting slugs but the products which dispense with them. It really should be National Stamp on a Slug Week but perhaps those responsible for it are too nice to call it that. So more often than not I scan the contents of such arrivals rapidly, decide if the binder or plastic pocket it is contained in is going to be useful to me and discard the contents. A bit like a child who prefers the box it came in to the toy. Last week a rather handsome plastic folder with a nice popper fastening was handed to me, which I immediately had plans for, so I didn't take much notice of the actual press release, except to think it was something about fungi in general or perhaps toadstools in particular because I caught sight of the word 'stools'. As I was writing the Cornish Gardener at the time I though maybe I could dredge up a few paragraphs about the merits of toadstools. I have to say here and now that I doubted this because I'm one of those people who is not into fungi in a big way. I'm a bit ashamed of this because being a fairly adventurous cook, I'll try most things. Nor is it because I don't like mushrooms, because I do, especially field mushrooms, which I can identify if I'm lucky enough to find them. They have a real mushroom taste which no commercially grown mushroom can match. It's not that I don't know much about fungi either, or wild mushrooms as they are more usually called. I do, or rather I have known quite a lot of people who are crazy about them and listened to endless discussions on the bounty awaiting us in the countryside if only we would go out and pick it. I can even tell your boletus from your Chanterelle and can knowingly point them out when walking in woods at the right time of the year. I also know that you can eat the majority of fungi found in our country, even puffballs which a dear old friend of mine, now dead, used to rave about and once brought into the office. A giant white monster in a bag which he tried to get all of us to try and nobody would. I know these things are considered delicacies in other countries, and that to the French and the Italians the fact that we don't pick them is yet another confirmation that we're all barbarians when it comes to food. During the fungi season the woods in many a European country are choc a bloc with people called Pierre or Marco or Heinrich carrying baskets and stout sticks combing the woods and fields for something to serve to the family for supper. This really is the problem, because I have, over the years, read a lot of scare stories about this plucking food from the fields, tales of Pierre or Marco or Heinrich coming home triumphant with a basket of carefully chosen fungi which they then sit down to feast on with the family. Then, not many hours later, half the family is found stone dead sitting round the table, plates piled high, glasses half raised to the ingenuity of Pierre etc. who knows his Angel Death Cap from his Chanterelle. Only, as it turns out, he didn't. Not funny, of course, but it happens quite often, especially in France,and I'm not prepared to risk it, even with a good fungi book to guide me by. Now where was I? Oh yes, the handout I thought was going to give me more information on eating delicious and free toadstools wasn't about that at all. In fact, when later in the day I looked at it more thoroughly I discovered the stools in questions were really that, stools, in full glorious colour, or in this case, only one colour, and I'll leave you to work out which one that was. Let me say quickly that I'm not laughing at the press release, which is a serious matter, advertising Gut Week, which for those who want to join in, is from July 18 to 24 and highlights digestive health. I can also recognise the talents of those who managed to sit around a table without giggling too much and produce an informative press release containing as it does a handy illustrated 'stool test' which you can stick on your lavatory and, well you know, tick off a checklist as you go! There are seven choices, two of which are, according to the illustrations, the ideal stool types which are what we all should aim for. I don't think I really want to go on with this. I know it's important, I hope people will take note of Gut Week, and I, at least, have given the whole thing publicity of a sort AND I'm using the handy little plastic folder. And I suppose I really should apologise to them for mistaking their carefully thought out toilet sticker for an illustrated guide to edible fungi. How could I? Most edible fungi are small, brown and wizened looking and – well – that really is enough.

I've just bought the quickest birthday present ever – walked a few paces to the post office, bought some foreign currency and while I was in a short queue got a birthday card as well and, hey presto, it was done. The gift was for one of the daughters, who is on a short break for her birthday, she said she wanted cash, which I normally feel is rather naff as a gift, but was convinced this time. So, oh the joy of not having to trail round shops. One year, buying my elder daughter a gift for a special birthday, I had to walk around a Cypriot town in something like 100 degrees of heat and visit just about every jewellery shop. I lost count anyway and, by the time we staggered into the final one, I was practically comatose and would have parted with any amount of cash to get out. This isn't in the spirit of the thing, because you are supposed to bargain but I disappointed both my daughter and the shopkeeper, who was just settling down nicely for an energetic session with her starting ridiculously low and him starting ridiculously high when I interrupted their enjoyment by saying: 'Oh for God's sake, just let me pay the man what he is asking and let's get to a bar'. By the way they both glared at me I knew I had spoilt their afternoon.

My younger days were brought back in a flash on Sunday when I noticed in a Sunday paper an advertisement for the Continental Cinema in Brighton, now totally revamped into a posh extremely expensive house. What a come down, or perhaps a come up. There was a time when I was a film critic, which meant that on most mornings of the week I'd go to a cinema at 10am, along with a couple of other critics. Sometimes it was just me, and the projectionist used to lean out and shout 'all right to start now, Mary?' I've never really enjoyed sitting in a crowded cinema since, without the personal attention. The Continental, as its name suggests, usually showed what was then considered rather risque films, although not by today's standards, but occasionally it tried to go upmarket by obtaining a critically acclaimed art house film, hence the invitation to critics. It wasn't an edifying experience, sitting through an incomprehensible foreign film shown on what was a very small screen (the usual customers weren't very fussy) where the subtitles had usually fallen off the bottom. We used to stagger out into the sunlight at lunchtime, coming face to face with a queue of somewhat dodgy looking early customers who were lining up for the first showing of the day, some of them actually wearing dirty raincoats. Still, it was part of cinema history and now, like much else, has been gentrified into oblivion.