We collected a few and I asked the boys if they played conkers at school. They looked a bit blank so I suggested that it was the game where you knocked them into each other to see who would win. My older son, Raymond, then brighten up and went into a great description of a game that he had played at school that, after half a minute or so, was clearly meant to be marbles. So, I explained the grand old tradition of the game of conkers and we set off home to find some boot laces and start a game.
Now, I had always assumed that young boys would naturally play conkers as a sort of genetic predisposition but everyone has to learn somewhere. The game started with the younger boy, Jake, having first strike. He missed. So did Raymond. Jake tried again and missed but managed to get the string wrapped around his hand. Raymond then managed to hit the string which lead to a brief Tug-of-War match. Jake then took a huge swipe at Raymond's conker, missed and shattered his own on the floor - this lead to a brief bout of tears.
Jake's conker was reloaded and this time Raymond took first swing. He hit the conker but rather than Jake's chestnut being obliterated it was Raymond's conker that broke. Apparently, this was unfair as Jake had cheated in some unspecified manner. We reloaded Raymond's conker. Jake then took a swing but Raymond moved at the last minute. This was determined to be cheating in a well specified manner so Jake had another swing but this time hit Raymond on the knuckles. This prompted him to retaliate and hit Jake on the head which led to a bout of crying all around.
I put the conkers back in the box. Maybe the Wii was invented for a reason.
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