Success for The Yorkshire Vet, Julian Norton as he treats a house pig with an injured trotter

I uprooted a few and put them in my bag, ensuring I left sufficient for nature (or other foragers) to enjoy. Craig, my fun, fungi guy, had insisted upon two things - only take what you need and if in doubt, leave it out.

But did 90 percent certainty constitute a credible amount of “doubt”? In my mind, not at all so, with great excitement, I sliced some portions when I got home and offered them to Archie, my raw-mushroom eating son.

Of course, I tested some on myself first. Two minutes after the mushroom, I was still alive and sentient, without any trace of illness and with no obvious hallucinations. Archie, soon after eating, was also fine. Or so it seemed.

Later that evening we were all in the car on the way for a family meal.

It had been another busy Saturday, starting before six for Archie to get to his swim training. You don’t get to be Yorkshire Champion by having a lie-in on a morning.

After that, I’d been to do morning surgery, followed by a session signing books at White Rose Book Café in Thirsk in the afternoon.

We were all looking forward to a convivial evening after a long day. In the darkness of a late autumn evening, the backseat of the car was dark and soon silent. Archie was slumped, unresponsive and unmoving. “Is he dead?” asked Anne, who had been sceptical of my mushroom adventure from the start.

“I hope not,” was all I could add, followed by, “well, I feel OK.” Luckily for Archie, he was simply catching up on missing sleep and hadn’t been accidentally poisoned by his father. This was also lucky for me, as marital harmony was maintained. My first, unsupported fungal foray had ended happily as well as tastily!

Later that week, veterinary work had me doing something else for the first time. I’d last seen this patient almost a year earlier, when I’d castrated him as a noisy piglet.

He’d visited me at the practice when he was just a few weeks old. I’d followed his progress as a proper pet pig over the year and so I was worried when his owner phoned me in a panic. Pigley had been trodden on by one of the horses.

Since I knew he spent most of his day sleeping by the Aga, my first thought was “why was there a horse in the kitchen”? But this was not a laughing matter, because the hoof on one of his trotters had been ripped off and blood was everywhere.

Now fully-grown, Pigley could definitely not be transported to the practice, like a dog with a broken nail. The pig was too big. It was my turn to visit him.

I gathered what I thought I’d need and headed out on a pig visit that was sure to be very different to the usual visit a pig vet might expect.

Pigley was lying in his bed in the kitchen. I have learnt that stealth is the best approach to persuading a pig to cooperate, and I applied this by the bucketful. With soothing, encouraging and calming words from everyone nearby, I soon had the injured foot cleaned and wrapped in a bandage, securely strapped on.

There was only minor grumbling and occasional grunts from the patient. A pig examined and treated in a kitchen and my first foray into mushroom picking: both had been a success!

*The Yorkshire Vet continues on Tuesday at 8pm on Channel 5.