Bonkers for Conkers!

Listen up, Americans!

I am about to rock your world.

Brits, you have permission to read this blog post with the immutable sense of complacency that comes from sage wisdom, for you already know what I will say to be the truth.  While it may have been some time since these memories were stirred, once revived, no-one can deny their inherent rightness and that all is as it should be with the world.

I am, of course, referring to the undeniable Pinnacle of Playground Playtime, the God of Games -  the truly glorious, undeniably fabulous game of Conkers.  Conkers is as British as it gets - at least it was when I was growing up - whole swathes of kids brought up on its highs and lows.  I hear that today Conkers is banned in school playgrounds due to "safety concerns" - I don't know if that is true or not but, if so, that's a pretty sorry state of affairs, IMHO.  A good old-fashioned game of conkers should be as integral a part of a kid's curriculum as maths, science and bad school dinners.  Its just the British way.

But, lets start at the beginning, shall we?  First, the basics...the rules.

Rules of Conkers

1. Obtain conker.
This may either involve a quick trip to your local graveyard (in November) to find a horse chestnut tree actively shedding or a short 1.5hr flight across the Atlantic to deliver said items to a villa in Northern Cyprus.

2. Prepare conker
See Conker Etiquette below.  This used to be a serious topic of playground conversation back in the late 70's/early 80's when I was growing up.  Whoever held the Key to Conker Longevity ruled the playground.  Period.  For those few weeks in the autumn, if you knew the secret, you were King.  Full stop.  Pens down.

3. Engage in conker battle for supremacy
Its pretty simple.  After you have strung your conker, you then take turns with your opponent in trying to hit their conker with yours.  Your opponent will hold their conker out on the end of its string (you can take your time adjusting the height at which your opponent's arm holds it up - thus starts the mind games), you carefully line up your aim with your conker - and take aim!  If your conker hits your opponents with an audible "thwack", you take another shot.  If it misses or if - schoolboy error - you hit the string but not the conker - you lose your turn and it passes to your opponent.  They, then, take their turn at trying to hit your conker.

The winner of the game is whoever manages to destroy the other's conker first.  Generally, a conker under attack will withstand several hits without visible damage for a fair few hits but then, suddenly, the first crack will appear and, from then on, you know you are on borrowed time.  Things start to go downhill very quickly from thereon in.

4.  Repeat - or not.
Once you have won one game, you are known as a "one-er".  From this modest pinnacle of greatness, you can then go on to try and attain ever more giddy heights - from "one-er" to "two-er" to "three-er" and so on, and so forth.  In our impromptu USA vs Cyprus league, I (representing the USA, of course), managed an impressive "five-er" until I was usurped by an upstart Cyprus conker (wielded by my sister's husband) who somehow managed to squeak out an "eight-er"!!!  By the last go round, it was just a tiny conker nubbin, holding on to the string within an inch of its life, but it still managed - somehow - to take down one of Thomas's conkers before finally falling victim to a fresh conker onslaught and riding off into the conquering sunset.

5. Cry when conker is (inevitably) shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.  Just like your dreams of conker playground supremacy.

6. Return to 1.

Now, those are the basic rules of Conkers. So far, so good, right?  However, for those of you who have not grown up with The Magnificent Game, I feel a few words on Conker Etiquette are also required here.

Firstly, no tampering with your conkers is allowed.  Apparently (for I have seen no photographic evidence, so I absolutely dispute this recollection of events), I once attempted to dip my conker in concrete, paint it brown and go for conker glory.  As I cannot recollect vast swathes of my childhood (much to Mumsie's chagrin), the likelihood of me remembering this one episode is fairly remote - but it seems to have left an indelible remark on Loopy, so maybe there is something too it.  Anyway, its bad form to do anything to your conker other than drill a hole in it for the string, polish it on your sleeve, look worriedly at it as it starts to fracture and whisper secret words of encouragement to it.  No baking in the oven, soaking in vinegar, painting in clear varnish or - apparently - coating in concrete is allowed.  No, sirree.

Secondly, its also bad form to aim for the string, in the hope of tangling it with yours and knocking the opponent's conker out of your hands and on to the ground (thus hoping to accelerate any nascent cracks).  It is sometimes handy (particularly in high stakes games) to have an impartial third party on hand as an observer, to adjudicate whether something was an obvious string-shot ploy or an unintended tangle and hit.  Blatant string shots result in the offender missing their go and play passing to the opponent - that plus the collective shaming from onlookers who recognize shady conker tactics when they see them.

Lastly, and this is not really an etiquette comment but more a word of advice - be warned.  Playing conkers hurts!  As we rediscovered, when someone smashes into your conker, trying to rip it from its string and shatter it into a thousand tiny pieces, it doesn't stay static, hanging docilely from its tether, taking the abuse without protest.  No - it tends to skitter away with equal opposing force in the opposite direction, stopping only when it slams into an immovable object which, in this case, is usually your forearm.  Which hurts quite a lot.  Neither is the aggressor immune from these action injuries too - if you go hell for leather to try and twat somebody's conker and miss, then your conker will sail past its intended target and, instead, bury itself in whatever part of your soft tissue happens to be in its trajectory, whether it be arm, thigh, torso, whatever. This hurts like a bugger too.  You have been warned.

So, those are the basics of this glorious game and I hope you now feel suitably equipped to go out there, find a friendly horse chestnut tree and make your own conker-y memories.   However, if you need further enlightenment, I will leave you with this short video of my sister and her husband, Sniper (a newbie to the sport), playing conkers as it serves as a perfect illustration of what the whole game is about.  Enjoy - and learn.  My sistah is a conker Ninja....

Hmm...not sure if hubby should be laughing
as hard as he is in this picture... someone's
gonna be in trouble....

A very rare conker malfunction captured on film for the very
first time - rival string fray-age with armpit capture.
Very dangerous.  Do NOT attempt at home.

Loopy and Thomas share a conker moment.

This is what an (out-of-focus) five-er looks like.
Booyah.

Eren gussies up for his big conker smashdown
move....

..and discovers the harsh truth that conkers can
sometimes bite back...