An amazing and tragic coincidence. A month or so ago, there was a report in The Guardian web news site http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/13/filmadaptations?INTCMP=SRCH about a London couple who went to stay with friends in Scotland. They decided to pick some field mushrooms and cook them up for dinner.

Apparently one person assumed the other person knew which mushrooms were OK to eat, so they went ahead and et ’em. Later that night all four of them felt sick and by morning they were alarmed enough to consult a book on mushrooms to identify what they’d eaten.

Ambulances were called and they all ended up desperately ill in hospital, with kidney and liver failures, dialysis, transplants etc etc. Ironically, both couples had nominated the other couple in their will to look after their kids if anything happened to the parents, yet here they all were, at death’s door. They all were/are in dire straits. It caused a serious rift in their friendship, because the visitors assumed the locals would know what was OK, or vice versa.

Now we have the ABC News item http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap-mushrooms/3757764?WT.svl=news0  of a very, very similar tragedy in Australia, Canberra, with two people dead.