So I just got home and turned out my pockets, and discovered that – alongside the more usual pocket detritus like a pen and a tissue and a trolley-token and an emergency 20p – I also have an extraordinary number of conkers.
Some additional observations on the subject:
1. These are not all the conkers I have collected this autumn. These are just conkers I have collected today.
2. These are not all the conkers I have collected today. These are just the conkers I collected today and didn’t instantly regift to someone more appropriate, i.e. my son, my daughter, or anyone else’s son or daughter who I happened to pass on the school run.
3. I have no plan for any of these conkers. I just want them. I see them; I stop; I pick them up. Because they are shiny and pretty and I can.
4. This must be what it’s like to be a magpie.
Look at this conker. It’s one of my current favourites. It’s all lovely and round and fat, and as I walk along scuffing up leaves and stamping on empty beech-nut shells, I can turn it round and round inside my pocket and enjoy its asymmetrical nobbliness. It’s like stamping on bubble-wrap while twirling a stress-ball, only with all-natural materials. Yummy.
I also really love this conker. In fact this conker might be the nicest conker I’ve found today. It’s an especially dark glossy colour, and the non-shiny part is so new and fresh it’s still a lovely clean white.
These conkers are twins. They came together in a massive fat uber-case, and I had to peel the spiny outside off to get them out, and it hurt a bit, but that made me feel a bit more justified in keeping the conkers afterwards. They have round tops and flat bottoms. They’re very tactile.
When I collect conkers, I like to imagine I’m taking part in the annual harvest of Nature’s glorious autumn bounty, but of course this isn’t true. Nothing I do with this conker will have any real value for either me or the tree. The proper thing to happen to a conker is for a squirrel to take it away and bury it, and then either a) go and dig it up later and eat it, thus contributing to the planet’s average mass of Squirrel or b) grow into a new tree, thus contributing to the planet’s average mass of Tree. “Spend up to a year in a coat pocket, then get thrown in a bin” does not form part of any rational food and / or reproductive cycle. If anything, I’m fucking up the annual harvest of Nature’s glorious autumn bounty. I am a horrid vampire scavenger in a stripey scarf and kick-ass Doctor Marten boots.
Here’s a conker I don’t love any more. I don’t love it so much that I couldn’t even be bothered to centre it properly to take this photo. It’s dried out and the shell has cracked a bit.
I took a photograph of this conker, but I don’t feel anything for it other than vague puzzlement over why I still have it. Once I loved it, but not any more. Now it’s old and ruined. Soon I will throw it away.
The shameful truth is that I am a shallow, fickle person who ignores the fertile mysteries hidden within, focusing only on the exterior. I only love the conkers as long as they are new and shiny and beautiful. Once they dry out, I lose interest. I suspect that my attitude to conkers means I am not a good person.
The only way I can redeem myself is to save all the conkers I pick up and hoard, take them to a beautiful field somewhere with light sandy soil and just the right kind of drainage, and plant an entire grove of horse-chestnut trees to gladden the hearts of everyone and feed all the squirrels in the area with as many conkers as their adorably fat little middles can hold.
Like that’s ever going to happen. 😦
I am supposed to be working right now. But I can never resist the lure of a new post from you. And this one is, of course, brilliant. It also reminded me of my childhood in Ohio, where we called these things “buckeyes.” I think “conkers” is better — the idea of disembodied deer eyeballs always made me squirm a bit. Especially when someone developed a recipe for a candy by the same name. (Peanut butter mixed with sugar, dipped in chocolate — far too sweet, but in an addictive way.) You have not wasted these conkers. Rather than adding to the planet’s collective mass of Squirrel or Tree, you have added to the collective mass of Wit. I’ll take that over a squirrel any day.
What a lovely message, thank you! And especially thank you for the new word “buckeyes”.
Actually, I sort of wish we had the name “buckeyes” over here, too. There is a game of Conkers where you drill holes in them, put them on strings and then try and smash your opponent’s conkers by hitting it with yours. Smashing each others’ buckeyes to smithereens would add a whole new horrifying dimension.
Haha, so true and so funny. I also do this even though I was once hit on the head by a falling conker and got a bump on the heasd that became infected. Didn’t put me off, I just scuff along a little faster under chestnut trees now.
Oh yes, I know what you mean…I always feel a vague sense of danger when I walk underneath a conker tree at this time of year. Especially when it’s windy. I still have to stop and collect the conkers, though.
LOL!
If you send me articles on popcorn I can send you this. I used to compulsively collect these as a child, but I grew them as well.
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I love conkers. I miss autumn conkers. I was just trying to explain them to my American boyfriend who claims they don’t have them in the States. Heathens. Then I discovered the seeds of the lucumo fruit – very conker-like! And also the seeds of the most delicious natural milkshake ingredient in the world. Double bonzer!
I’ve always been told that conkers are incredibly bitter and nasty, but I wonder if it is possible to roast them (in the same way you can roast chestnuts)? Maybe I’ll try the experiment and see what happens…
I like the sound of a lucumo fruit milkshake.
I know for sure that buckeyes taste nasty! But I do like the idea of smashing them to smithereens — and I bet my kindergartner would like it even more.
Awesome blog. Made me smile all the way through. Thank you for sharing with the world. You are fab (as are conkers of course).
Oh, thank you – so pleased you enjoyed it!
Conkers are indeed awesome. I came home with another pocketful today. My husband tells me I have a problem.
I cannot leave a conker on the ground. I love them. All of them.
I love acorns too, but not so much as they aren’t shiny. Does that make me a bad person?
If you’re a bad person for not wanting the acorns then I am too. Acorns are okay, but they’re not conkers.
There are no conker trees where I live now, there were lots when I lived up north. I am saddened by the lack of conkers in my life. Apparently if you put them in your house it will scare spiders away (I don’t know why spiders are afraid of conkers, unless they also have had a blow to the head under a horse chestnut tree. Actually I quite like the idea of a spider fable passed down through generations of the eight-legged, warning of the dangers of conkers.) Anyway, my point before I so rudely interrupted myself was that you could try doing that with the ones you pick up in your magpie-like state.
I really miss conkers! I remember we used to string them into necklaces.
I was just browsing the internet to find a definition for a British phrase I read in a book: “Dig like conkers”.
It was about kids mauling through bombsites in WWII, looking for mosaic tiles. They’d “did like conkers”.
I’m glad to find your site and even happier to find someone who likes to pick them up. As another reader said, here in the states, we call them buckeyes and consider them lucky. I keep them on my desk to enjoy their shiny smoothness. Good to know I’m not the only one.