Conkering heroes and villains with a tough new nut to crack

ON SUNDAY I saw some boys foraging among the yellow and orange leaves cast by horse chestnut trees in Otley, engaged in the annual tradition of hunting for the king of conkers. As usual, though, the biggest ones were high on the tree, and unsportingly were determined to remain there despite being coaxed down with well- aimed sticks.

But this autumn, is it really possible to have a socially distanced game? To observe the two- metre rule, surely it would be necessary to have elastic arms or at least use longer strings.

The organisers of the World Conker Championships, an annual contest in the Northamptonshire village of Southwark, clearly thought playing conkers in the time of coronavirus is impossible and cancelled this year’s event. “This decision was not taken lightly,” reads a notice on the website, “but after much deliberation we have decided this is the safest and wisest choice.” That’s because the competitors are mostly adults – a recent world champion was 85- year- old John Riley, a Chelsea Pensioner.

But if children of primary school age are allowed to freely associate in the playground, surely this must be the year their autumn game is reclaimed from grown- ups. It’s an essential part of childhood, as was demonstrated by William, the 11- year- old hero of Richmal Crompton’s books, who usually carried a conker in his bulging pockets.

There are two magnificent horse chestnuts round the corner from my house above the Aire Valley, and I can never resist picking through the spiky windfalls for the best conkers I can find. I once put a conker on a string and struck it against an imaginary opponent’s hanging above the garage door.

I missed out the part where I used to toughen up the conker before stringing it up. The solution of choice used to be malt vinegar, but then all kinds of weird and wonderful concoctions went in and out of fashion – even a thin coat of clear nail varnish. My father’s whisky bottle was raided at one point, but I can’t honestly say this provided me with an allconquering conker.

A few minutes in a hot oven was also said to guarantee you had a tough nut to crack, something that Sheffield- born ex- Monty Python Michael Palin obviously believed. In 1993 he was disqualified for cheating during a conkers championship on the Isle of Wight after being caught using a chestnut made almost as hard as Sheffield steel by the oven- and- vinegar method. To eliminate doctoring, many competitions now supply entrants with their conkers.

Conkering began in Victorian times after horse chestnuts were planted in Britain’s streets and squares, but ominously many of those magnificent trees are now disappearing because of a range of ailments, including bleeding canker fungus and damage by leaf- mining moths.

A few years ago I saw diseased trees being felled in the Saltaire World Heritage Site, but thankfully for local conker gatherers there are still healthy trees in Roberts Park on the other side of the Aire.