Sir, – The other day I saw a man pick up a large shiny chestnut that had fallen to the footpath from an adjoining tree. As he appeared to be of a similar vintage to myself I imagined that he, like me, had treasured memories of playing conkers as a kid. How I envied the guys with the large menacing conkers on strings that succeeded in breaking the small puny ones until they achieved the magic score of “conker a hundred”!
However, my point is that, in the previous half-hour, dozens of children had passed, and ignored, the fallen chestnut on their way to school. Do children not play conkers any more? – Yours, etc,
TONY CORCORAN,
Rathfarnham,
READ MORE
Dublin 14.