Conkers Out Of Fashion? Even Forgotten?

Pub lunches have this great advantage over the more formal restaurant tables

Pub lunches have this great advantage over the more formal restaurant tables. You can listen to your neighbours on either side without appearing to do so. The topic, a day or two ago, discussed by two grey-haired prosperous-looking men was that of the September school start, then and now. Just when the "Then" was did not become clear, but it must surely have been before, or shortly after, the second World War.

They spoke of the minor activities apart from the rugby field or such. Conkers or chestnuts were the big thing in September, and the processes through which each individual put his chestnut in order to become champion. Some baked the nut lightly in lard in the oven, then gave it a cooling-off period before piercing it and putting it at the end of a knotted string. The game then was for the pair of contestants to take it in turn to bash the other's conker, which likewise hung at the end of about a foot of string.

The men argued if it was possible to claim, as some did, that they had smashed up to a hundred rivals with the one specimen. Come to think of it, in a minor way, it could have been used as a weapon, a cosh of a kind. Then they argued mildly over the question of marbles, the playing of. Was it likewise at the beginning of the September term that it was played? They seemed to be talking of a city secondary school. The biggest difference, of course, was the fact that the younger children were now brought to school in the parental car, or one of the parental cars, and even teenagers. Cities were no longer the relatively safe places they had been in their day.

Only children who lived nearby would walk home. Today, they were sure, computer games awaited them at home. Conkers were of another age. As for marbles - ugh. Most of the young, they expected, wouldn't know what you were talking about. All things change. Even pubs. In the days they were talking of, the pub was the place for, perhaps, the odd furtive dive on the way back from work and later, perhaps, for a session. Males only, of course, though there were, they deemed to remember, snugs or back rooms where women were just about tolerated. Must have been a long time ago. You'd like to have asked them to put a date on the period they were discussing.