Bonkers Over Conkers: Crazy Cardiff Criminals and Cheesy Chat Ups

My first story today relates to an age old UK tradition which I found in The Guardian. 

For donkey’s years, kids in the early autumn have enjoyed nothing more than a game of conkers.  The pleasure begins with hunting through the local woodland for horse chestnut trees and gathering conkers from beneath.  Having breathed the bracing autumn air for a good hour or two, you return home, your pockets overflowing with the largest, hardest conkers you’ve been able to steal from under your school pals’ noses.  While you’re enjoying a hot bowl of soup and a mug of hot chocolate by the fire, you force your poor, long-suffering father out into his freezing work shed to drill holes through your gathered ‘fruit’, pass a piece of strong string through each conker and tie a good firm knot at the bottom.  The following day you take your strung conkers into school and then in the lunch break you lock horns with your mates by striking your conkers on your friends’.  The conqueror is the conkerer who manages to smash his opponents conker.  Hope you’re with me so far!

All sounds pretty innocent.  I used to play this as a kid as did my mother and father and their parents before them.  We spent many a happy hour flicking our conkers with as much vigour and venom as possible at our friends’ conkers and nobody seemed to come to any harm (apart from when one missed one’s opponent’s conker and the opponent ended up with a bruised finger).  However, in recent years (as is the wont of EU regulations with their health and safety precautions) it’s been recommended that children should use goggles to ensure the shattered conkers don’t fly up and make eyeball contact!  I suspect it’ll soon be recommended that the kids have to wear full body armour, Kevlar gloves and a helmet!!!

But now conker craziness has hit new heights.  In the village of Poulton in Gloucestershire where a conker tournament is held for adults entering their second or maybe third childhoods, it’s been stated that there are new rules to ensure the competitors don’t cheat.  In the past it’s been found that the heinous crimes of soaking one’s conkers in vinegar or roasting them in the oven prior to entering the tournament to ensure they’re extra strong and hard have been committed.  Sounds painful but ‘no pain, no gain’ it seems!