Conkers conjure childhood

Out walking with Inka we met a neighbour and her young son. “We’re going to look for conkers,” he told me excitedly. It was good to hear, for it’s seemed to me for a while that so many of the simple childhood pleasures that I remember have been usurped by smartphones and iPads and other such instruments of the devil.

I’ve been picking up conkers in the grass most mornings when I’m out with Inka. It brings back memories of prep school and the excitement and competition to grab the conkers that fell from the big chestnut tree that dominated a corner of the grounds.

Conker fights were fiercely contested and it wasn’t always the biggest conker that lasted longest. Some of the boys got their mothers to collect conkers for them and the mothers were even more competitive than their sons. Some pickled the nuts in vinegar which was supposed to harden them up to be killer conkers, others hardened them off in the oven of their frightfully smart – in those days – Aga cookers.

Going nuts

Our agricultural improving forebears were enthusiastic tree planters, planting ornamental trees among the ubiquitous beeches and other hardwoods round the policies of their Big Hooses. I come across a number of Spanish or sweet chestnut trees on my regular walks.

At this time of year the ground below them is littered with their prickly hedgehog-like shells which contain the nuts. Unfortunately, our climate isn’t warm enough to grow the nuts big enough for human consumption, but they are devoured by woodpigeons and squirrels. Today’s picture shows a wonderful example of an elderly, tortured, twisted sweet chestnut tree, maybe 200 years old, which has become quite an old friend.

Acorns are another of nature’s harvests that attract jays. They bury the nuts they don’t eat straight away, hoarding them it is said, for emergencies if their other food sources run out in winter time. Whether they really remember where their caches are, the jays are credited with naturally spreading oak trees into new areas of woodland.

The woody casings of beech mast split into four to release their two beech nuts, another favourite food of pigeons. I was given half a dozen of the birds by a shooting friend and after I’d plucked them I found the crops of two of them absolutely stuffed with beech nuts. Puppies are for life

With only two months to go, some families will be thinking about buying a puppy for Christmas. Dogs are undemanding animals generally – they need to be fed and watered, they expect to be walked regularly and they want you to like them as much as they like you

There is plenty of information and advice to be found online about the responsibilities of taking on a puppy – especially for the first time – so I will only make the point that you should always choose a dog that fits in with your family’s lifestyle.

My father, who was usually a practical man and had owned dogs, had a bonkers period in his life when he disregarded this advice. He was a shooting man and he decided to buy and train one of the more specialised gundog breeds.

I can’t remember what order they came in as I was quite young, but there was a German shorthaired pointer (GSP), English pointer called Dileas (Djee-luss, Gaelic for faithful), a Gordon setter, an English setter and a Weimaraner.

Father was a busy Montrose solicitor with too little time to walk these highly energetic dogs that needed to be exercised at least an hour a day. They were all intelligent, sensitive, gentle, friendly animals, but grew bored if they weren’t exercised enough. They were beautiful examples of their breeds, with impeccable pedigrees, but each one lasted about six months until father decided they were not responding to his inadequate training.

Mist, the silver-grey Weimaraner (hence their nickname, ghost dog), was the author of his own demise. A friendly dog, he would rear up on his hind legs, place his front feet on my mother’s shoulders and lick her face. Father came home one lunchtime to find my mother weeping on the gardener’s shoulder after another display of affection and, without a word being said, realised that Mist’s days were numbered.

Before a new home could be found for him, Mist managed to scramble over a 7ft fence and, quite unused to traffic, ran heedless in front of a bus and was killed instantly.

Father then went to the opposite extreme and bought a sweet little cocker spaniel called Molly on the grounds that she had the shortest legs of all the gundog breeds and couldn’t possibly run as far as her long-legged predecessors. Another bad miscalculation as it turned out. Molly had determination and probably travelled as far as her long-legged predecessors – she just took longer to do so.

So this week’s message from the bridge is – think before you buy a puppy. For the puppy’s sake as much as yours.

Fights were fiercely contested and it wasn’t always the biggest conker that lasted longest

Picture: Angus Whitson. This “elderly, tortured, twisted sweet chestnut tree” and the Man With Two Dogs have become well acquainted over the years.