Dave's blog

Having a twin, especially one you work with on something public can sometimes mean their opinions get mixed up with your own. By and large this is fine, Andy does most of the time have very similar views to myself and I have no problem with this case of mistaken identity. In fact a lot of the time it can count in my favour as he has written something in a magazine or been interviewed expressing the same opinion as myself saving me the effort but still giving me the positive publicity. A good example of this was when I received an email from a prospective employer saying he liked my piece in Towpath magazine. I didn’t even know such a publication existed but rather than come clean I just avoided the subject in the reply.

However, every once in a while Andy comes out with something so jaw dropping that I’m not entirely sure which recesses of his mind they have emerged. At this point I usually want to tell people as loudly as I can – we are very different, his way of thinking is really NOT the way I think!

He came out with one such clanger just last week on Radio 4’s Farming Today. During the show they introduced us as ‘Andy and Dave Hamilton’ rather than introduce the listener to our individual voices. This doesn’t normally happen, Radio 4 usual way is to introduce guests after their initial line of speech – for example I could have said, ‘The nettle can be used to make a milk rennet’ and the announcer would say over the top, ‘Dave Hamilton’, then I would continue. However no such non-ambiguity for me when Andy bemoans that there were far less mushrooms around last year because of all the Eastern Europeans picking them!  I know Andy is not a racist but his  explanation to Bristol’s dwindling numbers of fungi could be seen as a little offensive to some.
Why didn’t he say the council could have been using more fungicides last year to prevent problems such as honey fungus damaging the trees? Or he could have said it was simply a bad year for mushrooms as it was wet and dry at just the wrong times!

So I would like to state from here on end that Self-Sufficientish or to put it more accurately, Andy Hamilton does not always express the views of Dave Hamilton. I may have to start including this in emails, just greyed out at the bottom –

Andy Hamilton does not always express the views of Dave Hamilton.

Thanks for reading

P.S. Andy was of course not very happy when he read this. He stands by his explanation and would like to point out that Eastern Europeans know a lot more about foraging mushrooms than native Brits.  Indeed Poland is the only country in the world where mushroom numbers are believed to have declined by human picking.  I still think it’s more than likely the council sprayed the field with fungicide after they found fairy rings AND honey fungus but then again what’s life if you can’t disagree on the odd thing – besides who even reads this blog!!!