My first conker of the year collected in sniffling September. The crunchy thuds of the spiky horse chestnut shells bombing the paths, splitting and spewing out seeds. I rub my thumb over veneered surface, the deep browns and burgundies lined with curving veins - a rough heart-shaped head potential of wood.
Every September I find my childhood seeded in my hands, the same hands - smaller and less lined - that collected conkers with such excitement when I was in Elementary School. The grief of the lost summer holiday allayed by the bounty tumbling down from the horse chestnut trees, the long green leaves already browning and crinkling. Under every tree in my hometown, every town across England, children gathered and giggled. We collected buckets of conkers and selected the fattest, roundest, hardest ones to be used in the greatest game of boyhood, the simply named Conkers. Preparing the conkers meant stabbing the heart of them with a threaded steel skewer - delicately so as not to split the embryonic wood. Then we’d thread the conkers on spare shoelaces and practise the swing: conker hooked behind two fingers like a longbow arrow. The vicious overarm swing to smack down on an opponent’s conker. The school playground then rang with the sounds of cracking conkers; the swish of string slicing the air; cries of success or sudden dismay as a conker shattered; muffled swearing when the conker clips knuckles and fingers instead of the target; gossip about winning conkers. How are they lasting so long? Were they pickled in vinegar? Grumbling from the teachers: this game should be banned. Conkers was a game of reverse survival: the smallest, unfit conkers were never used or destroyed but instead planted in pots or in the garden. They rarely grew or the saplings shuffled through months later, forgotten.. In my last year, my school finalised its adult threat: the game was banned. Health and safety. Too many sore hands. Conkers would have to be a black market weekend game. Thirty years later, the International Union for the Conservation Nature puts the horse chestnut tree on its Red List as it declines across Europe, taking conkers and childhood innocence with it.
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I wish I could say that I love jazz. I appreciate the tremendous skill involved in playing this important musical genre, and I’m willing to go to concerts, especially if they are...free. Such an opportunity came when my wife, teacher friends and I were at a teaching conference in Hannover, Germany.
In the early evening we headed into town for some drinks, and my wife - ever the socially outgoing member of our marriage - got talking to a jazz musician who was playing a concert that night. The musician invited us to come along. Having no other plans, we agreed to do this. A couple of hours later we arrived at the club to find advertisements for ‘Free Jazz’. At the box office we were temporarily confused by the need to purchase tickets. ‘But It’s free jazz.’ “Yes, I know’, said the young, patient box office woman. ‘You need tickets’. ‘….But it’s free.‘ ‘I know this. You need tickets’. We explained that we had met one of the musicians who personally invited us. She went to check out our story. Yes, Ok she sighed impatiently. We entered, bemused - a cultural misunderstanding, we thought. When the concert started we quickly realised the misunderstanding was entirely ours. Free Jazz, it turns out, is not a description of its cost but of it’s form. The ‘free’ part means the music is devoid of pre-set rules: each musician is free to improvise in the purist, most experimental manner desired. This evening that meant harmonic hell. Not only were all the musicians playing an incomprehensible cacophony, but the singer started screeching scat style without a discernible sense of timing or connection to the instruments. Too polite and embarrassed to head to the exit (which meant passing the band), we stood at the back, suffering. I put my fingers in my ears, closed my eyes, and tried to meditate myself into appreciation or anaesthesia. My wife wore a hopeful smile. In the end, when there was a lull in the screeching and instrument slapping, we crept out past the band, ashamed heads down, and all quietly hurried went back to the hotel. Loving jazz remains an ongoing project. It was a rare event when my maternal grandfather, Ben Bailess, would take my brother and I out for an activity or adventure. They have left a distinct taste in my memory, flavoured by excited hopes and childish disappointments that still trigger feelings of joy and guilt.
My grandparents retired to a seaside lifestyle in Paignton, Devon - part of the English Riviera. We visited during most school holidays. One summer, he surprised us with the purchase of two wooden sailboats and the offer to take them down to the man-made boating lake at Goodrington beach. There was no chance we would ever own the radio or the less expensive remote-controlled boats sold in a toy shop on Winner Street. We saw them every time we walked from their hilltop house on Penwill Way down to the town centre. We were allowed a few minutes to drool on the window of the Aladdin’s Cave of unattainable toys: boats, some as big as our bodies, along with the remote-controlled planes and cars, Airfix models and other glamorous toys we could never afford. Granddad’s abracadabra boats had a simplistic beauty: red and blue paint, cotton sails and string line. We were grateful for the illusion and keen to learn how to cast the spell. At the boating lake we plopped the boats in with no knowledge of wind or wave directions. We tugged the string as we circled the pond, enjoying the windy gusts and sudden uncontrollable turns My impatient brother soon grunted with boredom. I was jealous of the richer grandchildren with their electric power boats: show-off turns, churning up the water with noisy revving. Our fickle sails flopped with abandoned purpose and the boats often overturned. Once righted, we pushed them out but the mischievous wind flicked them back in sniggering parabolas. An afternoon sea breeze built. Granddad got cold and sensed our doldrums. He took us home with talk of getting back in time for Nan’s dinner. We trudged up the steep sea-view hill of Penwill Way, dripping with an indiscernible disappointment. The boats were laid to rest in the shed and rarely retrieved. Best efforts over, we returned to dreaming. |
AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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