Sir, - David R. Noble's question (October 26th) of what - other than playing conkers - one could do with chestnuts brought back memories of childhood autumns in Vienna. Chestnuts were plentiful, and we would spend many happy hours stringing them together to make necklaces or snakes, or carving them into menageries of glossy animals (with matchsticks for legs and bits of wood for tails).
Best of all, chestnuts were a useful source of pocket money. We would gather them in bags, buckets and baby buggies, and sell them (as winter food for deer) to the Park Administration's collecting points, conveniently situated at either end of a three mile chestnut avenue in the Prater.
The one thing we did not do with chestnuts was to tie them to strings and hit them together. "Conkers" was not (and, to the best of my knowledge, still is not) a game Austrian children play.
Yours, etc.,
Ditton Road,
Surbiton, Surrey.