Saturday 12 October 2013

She stoops to Conker



And I do, I can’t resist the shiny jewels that are strewn along my path. They gleam in autumn sun, old friends from playground days. They feel like they have been designed to fit in my palm, slippery smooth and sculpted for comfort. At once a precious stone and perfect missile. I have never been hit on the head by a falling conker but I imagine it would be like the sky falling down.  I may have inherited my habit from my mother, who I remember used to bring them back from her shopping -trolley trips to town. The excitement of one still in its case of angry prickles and the delight of stamping on it to unwrap the special present. Will it be a round one, to drill and win competitions with, or two cheese cutters? These half-moons were a disappointment in days gone by but I have a new regard for them as the contrast between flat and round is a further tactile pleasure. Spider scarers, but they smell of nothing, taste of nothing, tongue slides on veneer. ‘Get that out of your mouth, you might choke!’


Not so many years ago, (11, 12, 13?) we held three annual world conker championships. We sprayed a conker gold, tied its gold cord into a medallion, and bought a yellow jersey in a charity shop. Then we had a night of nostalgia, wine and fighting. 11, 12, 13 (?) years ago we didn’t care that our kitchen became a place of pale yellow conker inners, we were children again! Invariably the champion was the person with the weakest strike. I remembered ancient strategies, baking, grilling, vinegar soaking. These techniques would beat the pants off those passive combatants, but of course I never practised them; we had rules, no cheating now allowed. Alas, we moved away and didn’t meet potential conker players in our new town and cared more about our kitchen. So the golden conker probably lies dusty and discarded at the back of a drawer of the last winner, or binned entirely, released from its aura.


Horse chestnuts (why horse?) are like speeded up us, going from pretty and perfect but in hours losing their sheen and within a week wrinkled and cracked and as light as corpses. Then, I throw them in the bin. They travel in the rubbish-munching lorry to the dump and if they’re lucky and if there is any magic in them maybe they grow into trees, fed on banana skins and cellophane.
But the trees are sick. Their withered leaves surround their perfect children, hopes for future generations. I don’t know if illness is already written into these round nuts or if I should be planting my pocketfuls to replace their diseased parents. Or will they all die and I’ll be dribbling in a home telling random electronic children about the joys of conker competitions and the magic of horse chestnut trees that used whisper silent promises in the wind.