Friday, September 9, 2005 - Bonkers about conkers

What are god damn conkers? I hear all the Americans asking. Well before there was Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or even G. I. Joe there were conkers............ and the best part was that conkers were free! In looking at the BBC website today I noticed that Bill Oddie( one of my heroes) is monitoring Autumns imminent arrival with a countrywide Autumnwatch - that would be Fallwatch to you Yanks (and the Goodies are a subject worthy of their own blog apart from Graham Garden, the specky one).  In Britain there are six key indicators that Autumn is approaching, which are the last Swift( a migratory bird), the first ripe blackberry, flowering ivy, ripe hawthorn berry and ripe conker. Of which only the blackberry is edible, which happens to go well with a nice magic mushroom soup. The conker is the seed of the Horse Chestnut tree, small roundish and brownish /red in color which is collected by small British boys, starting at this time of the year. The conker is contained within green pods with a mace like spiney quality, either dislodged from the tree or found in the grass. Once collected the conker is then drilled with a small hole and threaded with a piece of string or old shoelace from your Grandad's favorite bowling shoes, which is knotted to prevent the conker coming off, and the game may commence. Whoever goes first may be decided by coin toss of a farthing ( approximately a pound in todays money) . For example, the owner of a 'sixer' (ie, the victor in six previous games) will have priority over the owner of a mere 'two-er'. The receiver holds up the hand, dangling the conker on the end of its string. The other player then attempts to hit the dangling conker as hard as he can with his own conker by swinging it overarm. If he hits, he gets another go. If he misses, play switches and the receiver gets a crack at his opponent. This continues until one or other of the conkers is so damaged that it falls off the string. The winner can then add the loser's conker value to the victory count of their conker, turning the above mentioned sixer into an eighter. Some secret recipes such as baking the conker in a low lit oven or soaking it in vinegar can be implemented in order to yield strategic advantage however the results are neglible in my opinion. Is that clear?  Now proceed to your nearest Walmart and buy the latest 'Made in China' action figure as your obese kid is too fat to get up the tree anyway, after eating 2 dozen pop tarts and a half dozen Big Macs this week   Any analogy between myself and the Horse Chestnut tree bearing 'fruit'  in it's Autumn years is purely intentional