wrzesień 2009 - Conkers

Conkers

You've been blindfolded, put onto an aeroplane and flown around for several hours before landing in a field near a village. Your blindfold has been removed, as have all the local signposts and notices. It's autumn. Here's your task: find out as quickly as possible whether you have been put in Poland or Britain.

OK, we all know you could ask someone in the village, see which side the traffic drives or all sorts of telltale signs, but one of the fastest might be to find the nearest horse chestnut tree. Are there any large chestnuts lying around underneath it? No? Then you are almost definitely in Britain rather than Poland.

The game of conkers, also the name we give to horse chesnuts, is so popular among boys in British primary schools that it is rare to find the seeds of these trees lying on the ground when they appear in the autumn. If you are anywhere near a town or village, or in one, the conkers are grabbed the moment they fall from the trees. Sometimes you can even see children climbing the branches to shake them loose, just in case a rival manages to get their hands on one before them. And that's why you can tell you're in Britain, because there's barely a single horse chestnut anywhere on the ground.

Conkers a simple game to play. Drill a hole in the conker and then put a piece of string through it (an old shoelace will do). Tie a knot in one end of the string so the conker does not fall off. Now you are ready to play.

Each player holds their conker at arm's length while the other tries to hit it with their own. If they miss, they get two more goes. If they hit, it's the other player's turn. The game continues until one player destroys the other's conker bank.

If you are victorious, your conker is now a one-er. If you destroy three, it's a three-er. If someone destroys your three-er with a new conker, theirs becomes a four-er and so on. That's why you sometimes hear children say 'Mine's a sixteen-er' and so on.

Here's a tip for improving your game: leave the conker to dry out before you use it. If you drill and tie it and then leave it for about a year, it will be a lot stronger than if you go into battle with it minutes after picking it up from the ground. Some people cheat by putting varnish on theirs, but you can normally spot when someone has done this. Occasionally people remove the kernel of the seed and fill it up with cement, a trick which works until the shell starts to break and their opponent sees what's underneath.

It seems to be only in Britain where this game is played, but it is played with great enthusiasm. Even football is less popular in school playgrounds than conkers at this time of year. A word of warning though if you are thinking of playing it yourself: it can be a little bit painful, especially if your opponent misses. Some schools banned the game for this reason, although at the World Conkers Championships (yes, it's a real contest), it had an unexpected sponsor. The competition was organised by the Health And Safety Commission.

Vocabulary exercise:

Here is a description of a well-known board game. Can you work out what the underlined expressions mean, and why children grow out of it fairly quickly?

Each of the squares is numberd from one to a hundred, so nobody needs to keep score. The winner is the first person to reach the last square. Player one rolls the dice and then moves their counter. If they throw a six, they get another go. Otherwise it's player two's turn. The players take it in turns to roll the dice and move their counters. In this game you can't miss a turn, but if you land on the head of a snake, you have to move it to where the animal's tail is (always one of the squares behind you). On the other hand, if you land on a square at the bottom of a ladder, you move to the top of it.

Dodatkowe zadanie i niespodzianka: kliknij tutaj.

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