Читать книгу The Dangerous Book for Boys - Conn Iggulden - Страница 14

THE FIRST THING TO DO is spend an autumn afternoon throwing sticks into the branches of horse chestnut trees. For conkers, the bigger the better is a good rule and any that still have white spots should be given to friends – they are useless. Collect more than you need. This is only your practice year. Next year, you’ll take out all the ones you prepared and win constantly, but this is the year you learn your skills.

The trickiest part is making a neat, small hole. You will be tempted to use a nail, a spike or anything else with a point. This does work, but there’s always a chance of spoiling a good conker in the process. Better to get your dad to use a drill on them. Don’t try that one yourself. The conkers spin round at high speed, or crack when you put them in the vice. Much better to ask an adult to do it, but give them your worst conkers to start with until they have learned the knack.

Once you have your holes, you need a strong trainer lace. Don’t waste time with the ones from school shoes – they just cut into the conker.

Getting the lace through is always tricky and takes patience. Start by licking the end and twisting it into the hole, pushing and twisting to feed it in. Once you have it started, you’ll need a bit of stiff wire to poke it through. Don’t be tempted to use a fork, they never worked for us. Prod and twist until you can see the other end and then tweak it through with the wire. It’s a good moment when you can finally pull the whole length through.

You need a big knot to stop it slipping back into the conker. The classic is the simple overhand knot, but you’ll need three or four of them to be sure of avoiding catastrophic match slippage. (Loop it over itself and then put the end back through the hole. Everyone knows this one and it’s too basic to put in the chapter on knots.)

Now you should have a conker that looks a little like this:

Yours will be round and shiny where this one is like a bit of wood, but that’s because this is a year old and has been hardened using the techniques at the end of this chapter.

If you can find a lot of old laces, you might think of taking ten or twenty conkers to school and selling them for 10 or 20p each. The aim is not to make money, but to create an instant conker club one lunchtime. You are going to need people to beat, after all.

NOTE: Sell them ALL before you start playing. People won’t enjoy losing to you and then having to buy another conker from the same person.

The Rules

1. Choose who goes first by tossing a coin. Wrap the conker securely around your hand. If it goes flying away on the string when someone hits it, the rule of ‘Stompies’ comes into play. Anyone, including teachers, can stamp it flat and laugh in a menacing fashion.

2. When it is your turn on strike, keep the string tight with two fingers under the conker. Wallop your opponent’s conker as hard as you can.

3. When you’re being hit, let it dangle a little less than the length of your forearm. Any shorter will be too easy to send into a windmill. (See Rule 4.)

4. Windmills. If your conker is sent in a complete circle, your opponent gets another go. Whether this rule is applied or not is agreed before starting play.

5. Strings. If the strings become entangled by a bad shot, the person on strike loses their go.

6. Take shots in turns until one conker is destroyed.

Scoring

There is an element of trust here, but if you win one contest, you now have a ‘one-er’. If you win another, you have a ‘two-er’ and so on.

If a ‘three-er’ beats a ‘two-er’, you add the numbers together to make a ‘five-er’. That conker is now responsible for the deaths of five conkers in battle. Do not lie about this. Honour is at stake.

How to Prepare Your Conker

The best conkers are the ones you left in an airing cupboard the year before. If you do this, remember to make the holes first as it’s practically impossible when they’re rock hard. By all means, play the first year – but at the same time, prepare for the next by securing a supply. Apart from the passage of time, the classic methods of conker hardening are:

1. Soak in vinegar for an hour, then bake in an oven at 250 °C for five to ten minutes. All you’re trying to do is speed up the effect of drying out for a year, so don’t leave them to roast and go black. It’s best to let your parents do the oven bit, as well. They will probably pat you on the head and talk about their own conker triumphs many years ago. Try not to go glassy-eyed in case they have a secret technique we’ve never heard of. If they have, send it to the publishers. We want to know and we like to win.

2. This one probably steps over the line of clever competition preparation into outright cheating, but a single coat of matt varnish is difficult to detect and helps to hold the conker together. Do not try more than one coat as a conker that looks like a cricket ball will be noticeable.

Avoid trying to fill the conker with something hard, like glue or fibreglass resin. At some point, the conker will break open and reveal what you have been up to. Bear in mind that suspicious opponents may want to check your conker. It’s best to play ‘clean’ and be sporting.

Now go out and find a big stick.