CONKERS
There are, I imagine, few men who cannot recall having played conkers. I regularly caught the fever when the season came round in my boyhood, and had all sorts of ideas on how to harden up a chestnut (I also had hopeful ways of making a schoolmaster's strap or cane painless!). Making a truly for- midable conker was something to which we all devoted much thought, and research was only limited because the fruit of the tree gave out. Many a chestnut 1 gathered was baked in the oven, steeped in vinegar, shrunk on the hob, in the hope that it might become a 'teener' or even a 'fiver' There were, of course, those who built up the history of the shrivelled chestnuts they dangltd for the test without thought of Washington's shining honesty, but a hard nut, from tree or human race, invariably meets a harder one, and the triumph of either is short- lived. My son came to me today with some chestnuts he hoped to toughen. 'I wish,' he said, 'we had a carved oak chair with knobs on it, like Billy So-and-so. He has sawn one off and made a wonderful conker from it. He breaks everyone else' s at the first whack!' I wonder about the modern boy. Iii my day we took nothing for granted. Conkers were care- fully examined before battle was joined and woe betide the wielder of a spurious chestnut!
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