World Conker Championships

Yeah.

Well, world conker championships, Martin.

They, they, uh, they took place at the weekend as you, uh, probably-

Oh, how are your horse chestnuts?

So that's definitely on my list for October.

We've just had, just before this podcast was released, the World Conker Championships, and this is held in Northamptonshire.

I love the fact that we have something that's a world championship in our county, and I will share in the show notes the intricacies of this event.

[laughs] You don't get to take your own conkers, which I thought that was really interesting, 'cause you have to pick a conker out of a bag, and literally there are just laces.

It's, uh, a book called The Lost Words, and it's by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, and I know many of you will know this, and I think I, we even spoke about, um, this in our episode last month.

But in this beautiful, enormous poetry book, there are poems which are, um, dedicated to nature words that were disappearing from the Oxford English Junior Dictionary.

And one of those nature words was conker And in honor of the Northamptonshire-based World Conker Championships, I want to share with you Robert Macfarlane's Conker poem.

"Cabinet maker, could you craft me a conker? Oil its wood, burnish its veneer, set it glowing from within.

Yes.

[bell dinging] It was the World Conker Championships yesterday, but what sound does two conkers hitting each other make?

[clicks tongue] [laughs]

[bell dinging] Rapper Cardi B celebrated her birthday yesterday.

So what's happening today?

We have the World Conker Championships at Sussex near Peterborough.

We've got 290 competitors playing All knockout

conkers, basically.

He was at, he was at Grand Designs at the NEC last weekend, and I didn't realize I wasn't gonna speak to him, but we had a chat yesterday, so I thought I'd play that.

World Conker Championships this Sunday, 11th of October.

There's a new king conker we'll be speaking to.

[laughs]

Nope.

[laughs]

Let's talk World Co- [laughs] World Conker Championships.

Well, this is-

I do actually have one more letter, and it's another letter from Ian McDonald of Billericay, and he titles his letter, The Secret Way to Divide and Conquer, spelt C-O-N-K-E-R. September and October are conker season, when youngsters and adults all over the country rush to collect those toxic seeds in spiky husks which have fallen from horse chestnut trees or were perhaps encouraged to fall.

Conker fights have been enjoyed since the eighteen hundreds, but it was nineteen sixty-five before the first World Conker Championship was held in Northamptonshire.

It's now an annual event attracting three hundred competitors from all over the world and has raised over four hundred and twenty thousand pounds for charity.

Dedicated conker fighters will know that the three main types of shot used to cold-bloodedly destroy an opponent's conker are the downward guillotine chop, the horizontal side swipe, and an uppercut from below.