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Old Chestnuts
It occurs to me that we are only about a couple or three weeks away from conker season. I used to like conker season when I was a kid, though I never managed to create a killer conker like some of my friends claimed to have done. That didn’t stop me from lovingly marinating them in vinegar for a few days, or trying to persuade Mum to let me bake one to concrete-like hardness (preferably a pre-soaked jobbie). To the best of my recollection she never did let me bake a conker and I never did develop a super conker which would conquer all-comers for years to come before retiring to the honoured spot in the bottom of a satchel, covered in fluff, shell-less and dry shrivelled in all its glory1.
We had a conker tree on the school grounds, just behind the science block, as I recall. We were allowed to pick up fallen conkers but not to ‘encourage’ them to fall. That didn’t stop us. Generations of schoolboys had developed a stooge system worthy of Colditz to warn of advancing school masters. I do not recall it failing in my time at least. Prefects were more of a problem, but were generally spottable in their black blazers (the hoi-polloi all wore maroon blazers) 2. This meant that we could hoof half end bricks up the tree with relative impunity, though the occasional fallen branch caused some concern.
I think the highlight must have been when a chap in my form, one David ”Arfa” Beynon, discovered a rusty gate hinge and threw that up the tree. It never came back down and for weeks we pondered nervously in the anticipation of it falling on and braining some passer by.
I don’t think it ever did; it may still be up there for all I know.
Do kids still play conkers, or is it all illegal drug taking and vandalism these days?
1You know, that looks far ruder in writing than it did while I was just thinking it.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
binidj will have an embolism.
2Except for Jan Mateki (sp) in the Autumn term of 1973, whose blazer sported a bright green sleeve for about four months until it disintegrated, but that’s another story.
We had a conker tree on the school grounds, just behind the science block, as I recall. We were allowed to pick up fallen conkers but not to ‘encourage’ them to fall. That didn’t stop us. Generations of schoolboys had developed a stooge system worthy of Colditz to warn of advancing school masters. I do not recall it failing in my time at least. Prefects were more of a problem, but were generally spottable in their black blazers (the hoi-polloi all wore maroon blazers) 2. This meant that we could hoof half end bricks up the tree with relative impunity, though the occasional fallen branch caused some concern.
I think the highlight must have been when a chap in my form, one David ”Arfa” Beynon, discovered a rusty gate hinge and threw that up the tree. It never came back down and for weeks we pondered nervously in the anticipation of it falling on and braining some passer by.
I don’t think it ever did; it may still be up there for all I know.
Do kids still play conkers, or is it all illegal drug taking and vandalism these days?
1You know, that looks far ruder in writing than it did while I was just thinking it.
binidj will have an embolism.2Except for Jan Mateki (sp) in the Autumn term of 1973, whose blazer sported a bright green sleeve for about four months until it disintegrated, but that’s another story.
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I'm sure Health & Safety have happily put an end to that tradition by now.
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"and conkers, which has been banned in some schools in case it triggers nut allergies."
But from BBC News 22nd August:
"Children are still allowed to play conkers and that's part of life, it's part of being a child, but it's about being sensible about what could go wrong."
And anyway it's not the H&SE lot that tried to do the goggles thing:
"The suggestion that children should wear safety goggles whilst playing conkers is just the type of thing that gives sensible health and safety a bad name.
The issue of requiring Head Teachers to ensure children wear safety goggles whilst playing conkers is not something HSE would ever be involved in, the notion that HSE has inspectors monitoring playground activities across the country is nonsense. Obviously safety goggles are very important within the correct environment, for example, whilst using cutting equipment. HSE inspectors will be inspecting, where there is a real workplace risk, to ensure that these risks are managed effectively."
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I remember when life was fun, and if you bumped your head or grazed your knee you just shook it off and carried on playing. *sigh*
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I'm guessing this was before nice big, fat Liability payouts?