Just as we were wondering why there had been no submissions referencing Blighty's favourite break-time competitive game, along comes this nostalgic tale-with-a-twist from Rayner. If any readers over the age of 60 would care to respond, feel free, and send us a picture of you in your school cap and shorts - Conor
Every autumn, we would bombard the local horse-chestnut trees with missiles in order to amass huge collections of the shiny brown nuts. These would then be stored in shoeboxes or biscuit tins until they all grew stinky black mould and our mums threw them out. Conkers would never, ever be played.
I can only assume that conkers were collected because of vaguely-remembered stories from Grandfathers of playground games of yore. In those days, they would sometimes pickle or bake their conkers to harden them.
On the one occasion Conkers was actually played, the vinegar-sodden little fuckers would disintegrate after about three blows.