Conkers Nearly Killed Me

It is conker season. As I walk along the pavement, seeing all the discarded horse chestnut shells and the horse chestnuts not yet found, or simply deemed unworthy, by the conker gathering child, I can’t help but remember when I very nearly died due to the humble horse chestnut... twice.

I’m sure that everyone in the UK has at some point read an article or seen news stories of a local council, school or education authority banning children from playing conkers in the playground, or just forcing them to wear safety goggles. Pretty much every one of these stories is accompanied by the obligatory ‘man/woman on the street’ declaring that it’s “health and safety gone mad”; the battle cry of the Daily Mail and its reader. And of course pretty much every one of these stories turns out to be complete and utter bollocks fabricated by whichever scare mongering newspaper (the word ‘news’ here is used very loosely) couldn’t be arsed to find anything else to give their opinion about. Sure, you may get the odd overprotective parent complaining to their child’s head teacher that their little precious got a bruised knuckle from a misjudged conker swing. But when I did a little bit of research for this blog (hard to believe I know) I couldn’t find a single report of anyone ever being injured while playing conkers. I found reports of ‘branches’ (read sticks) falling out of horse chestnut trees and injuring people (these sticks having previously been thrown into the tree to dislodge conkers). Reports of people hurting themselves after slipping over on conkers, which I can only hope was accompanied by the relevant slapstick slipping-over-on-a-bunch-of-round-things sound effect; and if it’s not the conkers themselves people are slipping on then it’s the resulting mulch from the horse chestnut cases being crushed into the pavement. There are even reports of injuries from people getting into fights over a game of conkers. Seriously. Fights! Over a game of conkers! But not one case of anyone having been injured by actually playing the game of conkers itself.

I know from personal experience, as will anyone who’s ever played it, that an enthusiastic game of conkers can result in very sore knuckles. Either, as with ‘little precious’ above, from a misjudged conker swing (accidentally or purposely), or from an opponent’s very successful shot sending your conker to wrap its string tightly around your fingers, and somehow tying itself into a knot, cutting off the circulation and turning your fingers purple. I remember many a conker game ending in me having to be cut loose from the conker-string- grip-of-death. But, unsurprisingly, neither of these, nor any of the other injuries mentioned above, were what nearly caused my early, conker related, demise. Both of my incidents were due to the seemingly harmless activity of conker gathering. This is where the danger really lies in the noble game of conkers.

Every child knows that the biggest and best conkers are to be found at the very top of the tree, and this is where my first conker related near death experience happened; or at least it’s where it began. As a kid I was always climbing things: stair banisters (much more fun than using the stairs), drain pipes, buildings, and of course trees. I’d guess I was at about the age of 8 or 9 on this particular September day when a small group of us had decided to plunder the riches of a horse chestnut tree that, due to its location just inside someone’s front garden, was unsuitable for the usual throwing-sticks-up-and-knocking-conkers-out-of-the-tree technique of conker gathering. A few of us opted to climb into the tree while the less adventurous stayed on the ground to collect the spoils. Like an overenthusiastic young monkey, I quickly made it all the way up to the very top of the tree and was happily going about the business of dislodging the conkers from their pedicels. I don’t remember what caused my unexpected exit from the tree canopy; what I do remember is watching the spiky shells of the horse chestnuts, that I was oh-so-close to only a moment before, suddenly accelerating away from me at a considerable rate (9.8 meters per second squared, but admittedly I probably wasn’t aware of this fact at the time). The garden in which this tree lived was bordered by a standard pointed top picket fence, and as I neared the end of my downward journey my skinny knees lodged themselves perfectly between the pales of it. In itself, this new anchor point only succeeded in giving the upper half of my body a hinge with which to change its trajectory and firmly smash my head against the, for some reason, concrete base of the fence. Even if hanging upside down by my knees with a shattered skull didn’t kill me I have no doubt that it would’ve very likely left me with considerable brain damage. The only reason I survived that fall was because a friend, whom I shall call ‘Steve’, mainly because that is his actual name, so I suppose there was no need for the inverted commas. Steve, showing an amazing feat of speed and strength beyond his size, caught my shoulders. Thankfully the rest of me was attached to those shoulders, and thus he saved me from the most ironic (and last) game of conkers I ever would’ve played, and very much lost.

I did sort of repay the debt to Steve some years later when he, while climbing over a spiked metal railing, slipped and impaled his thigh onto one of the spikes. I managed to lift him off the spike, to the unpleasant sound of squelching leg muscle, and (I think) use my t-shirt to tie around his leg to stem the bleeding. I have to admit I’m not entirely sure about the t-shirt bit, but I do have vague recollections of hobbling him home with his arm draped around my neck and being a bit self conscious of having my bare chest poking out from the leather biker’s jacket that I used to wear during every waking hour. Now Steve and I are nothing more than mere facebook acquaintances that haven’t actually spoken to each other in nigh on twenty years, but obviously I’m glad he caught me that day, and I’d happily buy him a drink if I bumped into him in the pub.

The second of my conker caused close encounters happened when I was about 13 and I’d been out exploring the world with Jamie, another childhood friend. Jamie (again, his actual name) was one of those kids who seem to have no sense of responsibility, who never quite grasped the notion of consequences. He was always in trouble for doing something outrageous or dangerously stupid, generally at the expense of others, and he was the kind of friend that, although you hung out with him, you never quite trusted him. And with very good cause. The particular part of the world we were exploring that day was the footpath that runs along the narrow strip between the river Thames and Kew Gardens. As we were walking along Jamie spotted an abnormally large conker lying on the mud between the footpath and Kew Garden’s boundary wall, and excitedly ran off to collect it. By this stage in my life I no longer had any interest in conkers and so I carried on walking, probably thinking what a child he was (he was a year younger than me). My thoughts were interrupted by Jamie shouting after me. I turned around and saw what I thought was Jamie kneeling in the mud. As I said before, Jamie was prone to playing stupid pranks, so I thought no more of it and carried on walking.

“Glenn! I’m sinking. Seriously, I’m sinking. Help me! Glenn!”

I turned around again to tell him I was in no mood for his stupid jokes, but this time he was almost up to his groin in mud. ‘Oh shit’ I thought as I ran back towards him ‘he might actually be serious.’ Luckily he hadn’t got that far onto the mud before he started sinking so I could still reach his hands and pull him out.

“I’m going down to the river to wash this mud off” and off he trotted.

I had never seen sinking mud before, apart from in films, and so my inquisitive little mind wanted to investigate. I had found a long stick and was crouched down at the edge of this new and wondrous piece of geography busy poking the stick into it. All of a sudden I felt a mighty shove from behind, accompanied by an evil and familiar laugh, and found myself running forwards across the three metre or so wide stretch of mud. I’d managed to run over halfway across before my momentum slowed enough for the mud to catch my feet and send me sprawling face first into the sticky substance. I was lying flat on the mud, and with my weight distributed, I was in no danger of sinking. What I should’ve done at this point was edge my way towards the far bank, which I was already quite close to. But I was a 13 year old kid in sinking mud and panicking. What I did was stand up, turn around and try to make my way back, about two metres, to the bank I’d just come from. I started sinking immediately. Determinedly I struggled on; defiantly (and stupidly) staying upright as I slowly progressed forward and downward. On the bank Jamie was in full panic mode, and was shouting “Help him! Somebody help him!” at the small group that had started to gather on the footpath to gawp at the entertainment now unfolding in front of them. I remember feeling angry that, as I sank lower into the mud, all those adults just stood there and watched impassively. Eventually Jamie found a stick, probably the same one I had been testing the mud with just a minute or so earlier, and thrust it out towards me. By this time I was pretty much up to my nipples in mud, but I grabbed a firm hold of the stick being proffered to me. Eventually, and to wild indifference from the gathered crowd, I made it back to the bank and dichotomised myself from the mud.

“I’m going home!” Jamie abruptly exclaimed as he started to run off, and I laughed. I stood on that bank, covered tit to toe in thick gloopy mud and I laughed so very hard. Partly because of the way that Jamie, fearing repercussion, had suddenly decided that “going home” was the best course of action, and partly from the relief of having firm ground beneath my feet again; I’m sure the endorphins still flooding around my body had something to do with it too.

In truth I don’t think I was actually in any real danger of dying in that mud, I’d probably sunk as deep as I was going to, and contrary to what films will have you believe, people rarely, if ever, get submerged in these situations; the body’s natural buoyancy will keep you from sinking further than about chest deep. As a 13 year old boy though, it was, at the time, a terrifying experience.

I don’t know if kids still play conkers, it’s hard to imagine that anyone’s created a Nintendo DS version. And because of that today’s children may never learn for themselves the inherent dangers of conker gathering. But, terrifying and potentially life threatening as both of my experiences were, I’m still very glad I had them; if only so that I can say to people, conkers nearly killed me... twice.