Old Chestnuts

[caddyman]

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. 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.

Comments

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

I think they were trying to ban it on the grounds of health and safety, or making kids wear safety goggles whilst playing. Something mindless like that.

[ellefurtle.livejournal.com]

I still collect conkers, although nowadays it's rather furtively done. They look so shiny! It's terribly sad the next day though when they are no longer shiny, but all dull and crinkly.

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

Do kids still play conkers
I'm sure Health & Safety have happily put an end to that tradition by now.

my predictable ten cents-worth

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

Ah, what memories, Bryan.

I competed with a conker or two when I was very young, but was turned off by the intense, mean-spirited competition among some boys over what I felt was a rather trivial pastime. So I left them to it.

I recall Jan Matecki (there you go, and wasn't it pronounced Matetski?), but not his green sleeve. He was a hulking boy, and a bully to younger ones, if I remember correctly. Later on, his cousin, whose last name was Budryk, arrived at the school. He was even larger than Jan but a very affable fellow, and always looked like he had not quite woken up yet.

As for Beynon, "hulking" doesn't even begin to describe him, and wasn't he known as Sasquatch for a while, there? Most apropos. He may have been academically sound, but I've never since encountered such a mumbling, socially inept, clueless doink. He had all the sense of humour of a housebrick, and breath that could turn you to stone within a range of six feet. I have met cheese sarnies with more personality. Having said that, he was a harmless enough chap and I am being a rotter.

[boredinsomniac.livejournal.com]

What are conkers? What's the game?