Vocal Voices

Today, Mrs O and I went out conkering! We know a stand of horse chestnut trees near our town centre and we just hit the right time, in fact, as it was a bit windy, conkers were falling off the trees even as we picked them up from the ground. We collected around 30 in short order, and they will be washed, polished, and put on display in a small bowl on our hearth.

Just as we were driving off, we heard the sound of police sirens. I remarked to Mrs O: "I bet we were spotted on CCTV and they wondered what we were up to, grubbing around on the pavement ...."

There are three trees that I know of on the common so I went for my daily check today - twice - thinking that with it being so windy they might have started to fall but no! There wasn't a single one on the floor, not even any empty 'shells' so I know no one's beaten me to them.

Oh love it

I can almost picture you both

Did Mrs O use her walking stick to knock a few more down

She didn't need her walking stick, Ton - there were loads on the floor. But we must have looked a right pair, bumbling around with an old Co-op plastic bag to put them in ....

Really surprised at that Jo, certainly both horse and sweet chestnut trees locally have been shedding their "fruits" for around a week now. In fact I wondered if we might have been too late today ......

We don't have them here - but we do get crunchy leaves

Ossie, I don't believe the 'putting them in a bowl' line for one second. You and H are soaking them in vinegar and baking them in the oven for conkering, aren't you?

Course he is

I was 'killer' at conkering at our school, thanks to my mum's failsafe methods of vinegar-soaking and then baking them

TheOstrich wrote:She didn't need her walking stick, Ton - there were loads on the floor. But we must have looked a right pair, bumbling around with an old Co-op plastic bag to put them in ....

Really surprised at that Jo, certainly both horse and sweet chestnut trees locally have been shedding their "fruits" for around a week now. In fact I wondered if we might have been too late today ......

It's taking me forever to walk Billy, what with having to check for conkers and then eat my body weight in blackberries

John asked me why I needed conkers, he wondered if I had a tournament coming up