Friday's child
November
19, 1999
Ben rushes up, howling. "It was a seventy-fiver and it's
busted, Miss!" In his hand, the shattered pieces of a horse
chestnut, its white innards powdery round the mangled
string. Behind him lurks Tom. Two years older, in Year 5,
Tom is wise in the ways of conkers and has an older
brother, too. His view of conkers is playground-oriented,
competitive. He shows no mercy in the conker wars.
Ben and his two pals are conker novices. They've only just
graduated from the sheer fun of gathering, plastic bag
clutched in hand, even with mum and little sisters, the
gleaming brown booty which spills over the damp earth of
the autumn parks. They still have feelings for the softness
of the sheen, the magic of opening the hard green prickly
shell and unpeeling the wet new brown nut from its fluffy
white blanket. They still cherish the particular conker
which is the biggest, the smallest, the most intricate in
grain, the most unusual in shape.
This is the first year the boys have felt bold enough to
run off on their own and hurl loose twigs into the higher
branches of the conker trees like the older boys.
Exhaustive discussion, consultation with dads and some
scary experiences with corkscrews have led to the
production of one fighting conker each. Iqbal and Jeneiv
lost their conkers in early rounds, but Ben's was still a
goer. Now it too lies broken in its owner's tender grasp.
"It was a seventy-fiver," he sniffs again.
Tom smirks. He has cunningly soaked his conker in vinegar
for two weeks. It was already a 500-er and now,
assimilating its opponent's victories, is a 575-er. "Bet
you mine's going to make a 1,000, Miss," he says
cheerfully.
Ben's teacher has tried to capitalise on this touching
mixture of aesthetic and mathematical interest by devising
conker puzzles and conker art projects. She can't
understand why they leave the class cold. They can't
understand either why Miss is so keen on conkers when Miss
has also gone on and on about why they can't bring in
pocket computer games. At the moment, Pokemon, a game where
you collect little monsters and house-train them, is all
the rage. Ben's teacher is inclined to class this game as
an invention of the devil, preventing children from
reading, writing and doing arithmetic, ruining their
eyesight and stopping them pursuing traditional childhood
goals like, like, er, conkers.
To Ben, it's simple. "I like conkers," he says. "And I like
Pokemon, too." He considers. "But Pokemon is more
expensive. So I'll have to wait till Christmas for it,
probably." Jeneiv chips in. "Yeah, but by Christmas conkers
will be well over." Ben brightens. He looks once more at
the remnants of the seventy-fiver, then flings it
resolutely in the direction of the bin. "Yeah, conkers is
finished," he says, and races off to the never-ending game
of footy in the bottom playground.
Tom looks after him. "Baby," he says loftily. "My conker is
gonna make a 1,000." And he stows it carefully away before
searching out other contenders to the conker crown.
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