The art of collecting conkers ………

There is an art to collecting conkers.

The fruit of the Horse chestnut tree, 2004

Now  my Wikipedia tells me “conkers are a traditional children's game in Great Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—the name 'conker' is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself. 

The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks.”*

And surprisingly it says only dates from the 1850s, although there is an account of a similar game from 1821 using snail shells or hazelnuts.

But I reckon it must be heaps older.  After all what could be so simple a game,  a game which must have occurred to children through the ages.

The trees originate in parts of southeast Europe, and there will be someone who can come up with a date for their arrival here.

And no doubt will give chapter and verse on the game and that stinky practice of hardening them first in the oven with an application of vinegar.

Early morning on the Rec, waiting for the conkers to fall, 2022

All of which is fine, but for me, today, it’s the question of how you collect them.

Some people use the bludgeon practice of throwing a big stick into the trees to dislodge the conkers, which I think is a tad dangerous and borders on cheating, while others just walk the walk collecting those that have fallen naturally to the ground.

Now if you choose your moment, usually in the early morning there are plenty lying there ready for the taking.

Rain stopped play, 2022

But then we live opposite the Rec and harvesting the conkers is just a minute’s walk across Beech Road.

And as a child living in Peckham, there was Nunhead Cemetery full of horse chestnut trees and even more conkers. 

Of course, despite how many you collect, you don’t use them all, leading to a plastic bag full of the things that ends up by degrees in the cellar, slowly going mouldy and destined to be thrown out in July, ready for the new season.

That said, with the rain coming down like stair rods this morning I am not sure how many people will be out collecting conkers using either method. 

Location; The Rec

Pictures; The fruit of the Horse chestnut tree © Andrew Dunn, Website: http://www.andrewdunnphoto.com/ I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: w:en:Creative Commons, attribution share alike. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.  And horse chestnut trees on The Rec, 2022 from  the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Conkers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers

Walking in Southern Cemetery in early summer and thinking of conkers

A walk in Southern Cemetery will not appeal to everyone, but there is a tranquilly, and beauty in the place.

And of course a lot of history and for David my facebook chum plenty of memories of collecting conkers on warm autumn evenings.

Which is pretty much what I was doing at much the same time in Nunhead Cemetery in south east London.

Now conkers are something of the past, even my sons no longer collect them.  We of course were lucky in that there are plenty of conker trees in the Rec directly opposite us. And in the early autumn it was part of the day to go across and pick them up.

But I always think there is etiquette.  You don’t go throwing lumps of wood up into the trees to dislodge them.  The correct thing and the fun thing is to go looking for them on the ground, always hoping that they are still in their shells and when pried open are that deep shiny brown and not still white.  Or worse still just the size of a peanut.

I have to say that many of these conker searches were probably more to do with me reliving my own childhood than anything else.  As I recall my boys enjoyed many activities which were actually just a rerun of my own young activities in the 1950s.

So they had the Beano and Dandy, played monopoly at Christmas and helped Dad make cardboard rockets from cereal boxes.

And still safely stored away is the red, yellow and black car made from a squeezy bottle for a school competition.

It comes out occasionally which is more than can be said for the conkers.  These we gathered in such numbers that even all of our lads plus assorted friends never managed to use up.

And so they sat in a plasi bag in a corner of the cellar.

If we were lucky they just shrivelled but sometimes they went mouldy and ended up in the bin usually just before the first of the new harvest fell to the ground.

Throwing them out always seemed a waste and a bit of a reproach for not doing more with them.

But there are only so many that you can soak in vinegar and bake in the oven.

Not that we resorted to such underhand forms of cheating.

You just gently made the hole with a crewdriver, threaded the shoe lace of string through the conker and went in to the park or playground hoping that  all the effort of collectiong and preparing was not shattered with one hit for a rival.

After all no one wanted to do all this just to see the prize and joy not even become a "oner."

All of which is a long way from Southern Cemetery so for those not interested in conkers but wishing to follow up on a name on a gravestone or wishing to track down a family member there is always the City Council online database which holds the records of those buried in Manchester cemeteries.*

There is also a map which allows you to locate the grave.

*http://www.burialrecords.manchester.gov.uk/

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson