Well Autumn is definitely creeping in after our Indian Summer here in Ireland. The September Horse Chestnut tree has a few less leaves and ...absolutely NO fruit left!
I was going to tell you in this post that children nowadays didn't use Horse Chestnuts to play a game known as 'Conkers' but evidently it isn't true!
Every child in a 10 mile radius has carefully scoured every inch of grass beneath our Horse Chestnut in the past month and resorted to throwing a football to dislodge those that hadn't yet fallen! They even begged Mr. Auburn for his 6 ft 4 assistance.
Mr. Auburn did manage to salvage one for me, it may have been the puniest one on the tree but nonetheless "oddly oddly onker, my first conker", that's what you're supposed to say for luck when you find your first conker of the year. Good job I have a seasoned stash from last year!
Roald Dahl said '...a great conker is one that has been stored in a dry place for at least a year. This matures it and makes it rock hard and therefore formidable.'
To play, you make a hole in your conker and thread through a string with a knot at the bottom. We used shoe laces at school, usually the ones from the shoes we were wearing! Taking turns, one opponent dangles their conker by the string while the other player holding the string in one hand and the conker in the other strikes the dangling conker.
The aim - basically to destroy your opponents conker...
Not as easy as it sounds!
I grew up with a chestnut tree in our yard. My father detested that tree for some reason but I used to love collecting chestnuts every year. I never really knew what to do with them but had I known that game I would have been in 100%. :)
ReplyDeleteConkers!!! :-)
ReplyDeleteCarly
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My grandmother has a horse chesnut tree in her garden and conkers were used in all kind of games when I was a little girl.
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