Good lord I’ve had a busy September – not in a bad way, but I have been all over the place doing things that I think were pretty cool, and so I’m going to write about them just in case you’re reading my blog posts but not following my social media profiles (that is a pretty niche event but I’m sure some of you exist). If you do want to follow me on Facebook or Insta then there’s links at the bottom of the page; it’s more of a behind-the-scenes kinda thing as I don’t post much about the spores or anything because it’s a nightmare trying to get the pages reinstated when they get banned. Basically just me posting whatever pops into my daft little head when the mood strikes me.

It’s a complicated one, selling magic mushroom spores. There’s still a weird stigma attached sometimes, even from other mycologists (more on that later), but also as it’s such a niche industry I feel it’s important to get out there and promote Orangutan Trading Co wherever I can by showing people that I’m a real person running a real business and that I’m actually interested in mycology too – believe it or not there are people out there who sell spores that don’t know the first thing about mushrooms: I guess to them it’s just a bit of dropshipping like Avon or Juice Plus. I saw a business post a recipe for Lemon Tek a short while back and it was very clear they didn’t even know what Lemon Tek was, had got the AI that writes all their content to produce a recipe, and didn’t know enough to fact-check it. Mental. I figure the best counter to this is for me to try and get myself out and about and show people that not only do I sell amazing spore syringes, but I also only started doing that because I loved mycology in the first place. Anyway – with no further ado, here’s what’s been happening:

All Things Fungi Festival 2025

So first up – All Things Fungi Festival. Set up by Max Mudie and Jana Nicole because there wasn’t a fuck of a lot happening relating to the mycology scene, with Chris from MycoPunks supporting the event as the main sponsor.

Obviously that means MycoPunks were taking part in a large style, and as Chris knows that I’m a helpful kind of chap when I’m not just sat at home selling spores, he asked if I’d be up for a bit of camping and helping him to make sure all the various talks and events running in the MycoPunks tent went as smoothly as possible. I tentatively agreed (camping pun intended).

Here’s the thing about me: I am recently discovering a whole lot about myself after my ADHD diagnosis, and one bit of that is that I have quite a lot of autistic traits that I’ve previously put down to character quirks. What I normally do if I’m going away for a few days is think about every possible event that could happen during these days away (logistics/problems/solutions/every meal choice), work myself up into a bit of nervous exhaustion, go to said event, smile at people and chat and try my fucking damnedest to maintain the right amount of eye contact and facial expressions and not talk too much or too little (because I am work and if I let anyone down I will beat myself up mentally for far longer than I should), and then I come home and spend about a week with just my family in my house and try not to talk to anyone else at all because my brain is fuckin’ mashed. I love doing things but there’s a price to be paid. I mean, the alternative is just sitting in the house forever so it’s a worthwhile trade-off, but I have to factor in additional recovery time or I kinda lose the ability to cater to other people’s needs and then people think I’m being rude, which I suppose I am, but not on purpose.

I don't usually wear the mask when I'm just chatting. Christ I've got powerful nips.

This wasn’t as much the case at All Things Fungi as it normally is, because it seems that there’s nearly a perfect Venn Diagram overlap with neurodiverse people and mycology. Why that is, I have no idea, but when I was chatting to people I was doing the usual hypervigilant learned observations that all us weird people have to pick up during our lives, and most people’s eye contact, postures, and speech patterns were 100% off the charts in terms of being neurodiverse. There’s this meme about how when you get a diagnosis you suddenly look at your friends and realise that all the ones you’re closest to are very likely closest to you on the spectrum as well (which has absolutely held true in my experience). This, I think, is because we’re less likely to fuck each other off with our social “transgressions”. Because of this, I actually found that I had way more in the tank, so to speak, and had a much nicer time than I’d initially expected. There were things I wasn’t so keen on – not every meal has to involve mushrooms just because it’s a mushroom festival, same as I would offer vegan/vegetarian options on a traditional menu, but there was a nice burger place just up the road so my “can’t eat the same thing twice in a row” quirk was satisfied enough. Not sure how I didn’t realise I was neurodiverse a lot sooner really given that I would rather starve than eat the same thing twice in a row (won’t eat the same thing twice in one day or in the same meal slot two days consecutively unless it’s a bacon roll in which case I would eat it every morning but never ever in another meal slot).

We put on a really good show absolutely full of amazing guest speakers who all made things very interactive and practical, thanks partly to MycoMyth and FungiTown helping to make the yurt look amazing, and a nice chap called Steve who put the finishing touches on it all with some awesome lighting that he just seems to carry everywhere in his van.

I also met loads of really great people (and I’m gonna forget some people so if you met me and you’re reading this and I’ve left you off it wasn’t deliberate) who work in mycology like Ashley Goldbirch, Harry Pack, Yuli Gates, and Will Brown, and also met some customers who obviously didn’t know it was me at first because I wasn’t wearing my Orangutan face. Got a bit mugged off by Merlin Sheldrake who didn’t want me to post of picture of me and him online once I’d said what I do for a living (which I found quite hypocritical) but then again that’s why I don’t really put any stock in having preconceptions of people just because they’re popular. If you’re reading this Merlin old bean, I’m not mad at ya, I’m just a bit disappointed. Maybe you misunderstood, who knows. All mushrooms are good mushrooms.

The only Merlin I recognise now

So long story short, I had a mostly great time, discovered that shitting into a compost toilet is my idea of a personal hell, and would (and will) go back next year although I’ll rent one of the camping pods so that I can take a less communal shit next time. You could go too! Ticket prices are very reasonable for what you get, the camping field isn’t overcrowded, and they do volunteer tickets where you’ve only gotta work 12 hours over the entire three-day weekend.

Then I had to wake up early and get on a plane and fly to Tenerife for the MycoPunks yearly staff retreat. So yes, that was excellent but I was also tired and had been washing with feminine hygiene wipes (first ones I grabbed off the Superdrug shelf and didn’t realise they were meant for chuffs) for almost a week so wasn’t in the best of headspaces for four hours of train and four and a half hours of plane. Either way it was worth it as Tenerife was excellent.

Again, I don’t really have to “mask” (hate the term but it is what it is) with the MycoPunks team because I’ve been away with them a lot, we’ve shared quite a few silly times together, and Chris has been my friend since way before either of us were following the call and making mushrooms our jobs, so that bit was easy. I had a day there on my own before they joined me, which allowed me to be able to decompress a bit, grab some ace food and a lot of drinks, and have some long beach walks on my own with no-one talking to me which was cool.

We then all fucked off to a nice big villa, with a pool and all that sort of jazz, lots of food and drinks, we went out and saw pilot whales (which are technically dolphins), and went to Siam Park (best water park in the world ten years in a row) which was paid for by MycoPunks as a sort of team-building/work chat in a nice place/reward for hard graft. I really love that Chris has chosen to run MycoPunks in an ethical way, and do every bit he can for his staff. Fun fact: since it started, he’s asked me advice on things like sickness allowances, mental health days, and other bits, and I’ve given him my genuine advice (which he didn’t have to take) that if your company treats people like they are important, then they will treat your company like it is important. Too many companies decide that no, actually, they would like an extra bit of cash in the company account and then oh look you’re having to claim benefits whilst working wow that’s a shame for you isn’t it pal? Oh sorry you’ve been ill, that’s fucking unlucky for you isn’t it and now you can’t pay your mortgage or feed yourself get back to work fucker.

Don't let the fuckers exploit ya

Fuck every bit of that – I actually left my previous full-time employment where I was in charge of an £850k department because they wanted to start going back to doing the government minimums on lots of stuff. If you do the government minimums, what you are actually saying is “I am giving you as little as I am legally allowed to”, and really you’re clueing us into the fact that you’d give less if you could, it’s just that the law prevents you from doing so. They had to put laws in place to protect people from you and your business. That’s not something to be proud of, that’s exploiting your fellow humans, and you’ll probably (and hopefully!) learn a painful lesson when your business doesn’t achieve all it could’ve done.

I won’t be a part of that awful culture, and so I was very happy to realise that Chris shared my ethos. Taking the ethical part out of it for a moment (if I’m selling you part of my precious few years on this earth you’d sure as fuck better be grateful) if you treat people right then not only will they put more effort into their work due to being happier, healthier, better rested, and less stressed, you will also retain employees for far longer and then you reap the added benefits of their enhanced skillsets and not having to spend money on recruiting and retraining. There’s a million other benefits to treating your staff like they have value as humans. It’s not rocket science, but you’d be surprised how few companies want to actually be ethical and give a shit, and every time you’ll see it’s a company that has unhappy employees. This is why MycoPunks does cool things with their staff, and I am fucking proud of my friend.

So that, me ol’ chums, is what’s been going on lately. Thanks for reading!