THE CASE OF THE SCHOOLBOY GAME

“What on Earth are you doing with those, Watson?” asked Holmes, staring at my hands, and he might well have stared because, whilst walking by the park on my way to Baker Street I had picked up a few horse chestnuts lying on the pathway, thinking it might be amusing to plant them in my own small plot of garden and watch them grow into giant trees.

“They’re conkers,” I told him, conkers being my childhood name for these nuts.

“I know what they are,” he replied irritably, “what I asked is what you’re doing with them or, to put it more plainly, why you have them?”

“I’m not perfectly sure, to tell the truth,” I told him. “My first inclination was to plant them in the ground and watch them grow.”

“You’d have to live to be mighty old to see much growth from them,” he told me. “You’d beat them to the grave, all right!”

“That did cross my mind,” I told him. “But I would see the first shoots as my baby trees reached for the skies, and that would be enlightening.”

“How so, Watson?” he asked, and I could see that he was in the mood to turn every observation and declaration of mine into a fresh question, and I was disinclined to allow him the amusement.

“Or I might play conkers with them,” I said.

“Conkers? What is conkers?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and clearly puzzled by what I had said.

“It’s a boy’s game,” I said, “or a girl’s I suppose, when they’re not undressing dolls!”

“How can a boy, or even a girl, make a game out of horse chestnuts?” he asked. “I have never heard of such a thing!”

“So you were never a young imp playing and having fun with your friends?” I asked him. “When you were a boy, that is,” I added, for clarity. “If ever you were so,” I further added

“I was engaged in useful activities during my formative years,” he frowned at me, “and never did a nut enter into them, though I do recall the occasion when I used a rather large coconut I won at a fair to raise the level of water in a vessel and thus plan an escape from the Tower of London were I ever to be trapped or incarcerated inside it.”

“Really, Holmes? And did it work?” I asked.

“It might have done had the coconut sunk!” was his exasperating reply. “But tell me more of your childhood game, and did all urchins in your corner of the City play it, or were you alone in your fun, as was I for most of the time.”

“Didn’t Mycroft like to play with you?” I asked, guessing the answer.

“Mycroft, as you will be aware, is my older brother and by the time I was planning devices with coconuts he was working on more advanced matters such as might be of assistance to his adult self when he worked for the Government,” came his cryptic reply. “Now this game of yours, Watson?”

I sighed. As far as I was concerned I was about to describe a childhood game enjoyed by just every boy I ever met to the only child in this land of ours who had never heard of it!

“One drills a hole through the horse chestnut, or conker as I prefer to call it, thread some string through, maybe about a foot in length, and tie a not so that the conker remains on the string. Then two of you, for you are with a friend, try to smash the other’s conker by taking it in turns to swing your own nut, allowing it to smash against the other. The winner is the boy with the least damaged conker, and the game, Holmes, is mightily amusing as you would have discovered had you ever played as a child.”

Holmes paused for a moment and gazed at me with his eyes almost alight as though long lost shadows of happy memories were fighting their way from some hidden and too serious depth. Then he shook his head.

“No, Watson, I have no recollection of ever being entertained by such a game, and so in order to educate me, how about us having a game of conkers here and now?”

“What? In here, Holmes?” I asked, querulously. After all, I was perfectly aware of the damage that could be done by solid objects flying unexpectedly off a piece of string and hurtling towards china plates or porcelain figurines. It had happened more than once in my childhood when wet weather had driven me and my friends indoors. I had received more than one walloping when an irreplaceable treasure had been knocked to the floor in my haste to win a game.

“In here,” he said. “Come, Watson, don’t say that you are afraid to take on an amateur in conkers battle?”

“We must be careful,” I said, indicating several fragile items he kept on a side table for his delight.

“Give me a conker, and I will skewer it!” he said with almost childish delight. I threw him one, making sure it had no unwanted fractures in it, for the last thing I wanted was to be called a cheat by a self-confessed amateur.

He caught it, and reached in his drawer where he kept all manner of useful artefacts, and removed a meat skewer.

“Just the job!” he ejaculated, and proceeded to screw the skewer through the flesh of his conker whilst I contrived to make a hole through mine with a clockmaker’s screwdriver.

Within mere moments we had bored holes in our conkers and were threading them with lengths of string. The determination on Holmes’ face was wonderful to behold, and the truth is he managed to thread his nut whilst I was still struggling with my own.

“I need a new prescription for my glasses!” I joked as I picked and poked my length of string.

In the end we were ready, and stood facing each other.

“You go first so that I can determine the best means of attack,” said Holmes.

He stood before me with his conker dangling and I swiped it with my own, catching it firmly and fairly and sending it hurtling round Holmes’ fist in a rocketing orbit kept safely away from breakables by his length of string.

“A good hit, Watson!” he declared, and it was his turn to strike mine, but he missed altogether. “Have another go,” I said generously.

He did, and this time he hit mine solidly, and to my utter dismay my conker flew into two discrete pieces, one of them towards the door just as it opened, revealing a frowning Mrs Hudson bearing a tray holding our mid-morning drinks.

The wicked half of my conker struck Mrs Hudson mid-bosom, and she gave a fevered little scream which ended with her dropping the tray.

“Mr Holmes!” she grated querulously, “what games are you playing like an urchin from the streets when there is work to be done and your rent to be earned!”

“It’s … I suppose it’s my fault,” I confessed, and set about picking shards of cup, saucer and teapot from the floor.

But Mrs Hudson ran out of the room screaming, and I cut my hand on a sharp fragment of a cup. It bled profusely, which made me grateful that I was a medical man with skills that involved stitching.

“I rather suspect a good soaking in vinegar followed by a roasting in the kitchen oven might help,” murmured \Holmes, thoughtfully.

© Peter Rogerson 20.07.17

SPORTS UNITED

SPORTS UNITED

Most men will proudly tell you which football team they’d die for and which shirt they insist on wearing for matches. It’s as if having such icons as footballers in your life is almost a rite of passage into the world of real men.

And over the recent past football has moved from being a working class entertainment, via punch-ups and fisticuffs fuelled by lager to a for-huge-profits business and private boxes and Sky television. But all that has passed yours truly by because I’ve never liked the game much, and I’m about to explain why.

It all goes back (yes, you’ve guessed) to my school-days.

As a boy in primary school I was always a bit bigger than most of my peers. I was reasonably tall, reasonable podgy (they even nick-named me Podge as an adaptation of my surname, which I found misery-inducing) and just that little bit bigger than most of them. Maybe it was because the school year was from September – August and I was born in the first quarter, in December, and so a tad older than most. Or maybe because I had a caring mum who fed me well. Or could be I was genetically disposed to being the size I was.

And when I was ten the school had a football team that played against other teams of ten year-olds, with a football teacher who clearly didn’t want to be anything of the sort. He was no lithe and athletic young man with the sort of eager expression on his face that always terrifies me. No, he was the teacher of the class next door and all he really wanted to do was get home as soon as he could after the school day, maybe to a loving wife or maybe to the loneliness of an empty flat – I didn’t know his marital status.

Now let’s put these facts together. Big boy, school football team and teacher wanting an easy ride through the job he’d no doubt had imposed on him – all the rest of the teachers, with the exception of the headmaster, were female. I’m not going to enter the debate as to whether schoolboys should be guided through their boyhood playing football under the guidance of a female or not. As far as I’m concerned women are more likely to be understanding and sympathetic than some men, but that’s really got nothing to do with it.

Back to reality.

The football teacher was short of a goalkeeper and he must have looked at the scraggy, scruffy assortment of youth in front of him and picked out the biggest.

Me.

He asked me whether I wanted to be a goalkeeper and I can’t remember my response. Was it negative, me being basically honest, or positive, me not wanting to upset a teacher I didn’t know so well. But whatever my response, the conclusion was he felt the need to try me out.

By kicking balls at me.

Now younger readers may be unaware, but back in the brash fifties (this would have been circa 1953) footballs were exclusively made of leather. And when leather footballs have been used for some time, have been kicked around by generations of small boys, they lose their shiny polished surface and become scuffed. Then it’s only got to rain and they get heavy as they absorb what seems like gallons of water.

It must have been raining around the time I had my “trial” and Mr Martin (yes, that was his name) decided to kick an array of footballs at me to see how efficiently I stopped them.

I didn’t.

I ran away from them. I dodged to one side if one of those unexploded bombs threatened to come anywhere near me. And as, gripped by terror, I underwent this “trial” I must have decided, there and then, that of all human activities football would never be the one for me.

And things haven’t changed much.

The town I lived in gave its name to the other major winter sport, rugby, and I never got on with that either when I moved up to secondary school. But not because of the weight of the balls. No – I hated shivering in the cold (in defensive positions), lost in the mists that hung around the school grounds and unaware of what was going on at the other end of the field, where points were being scored and glory earned for everyone bar me.

I guess I’m simply not cut out for sports, though I did have a moment of triumph in the summer, with cricket.

I was made, by a cynical teacher who thought the entire world should revolve around sports of every kind, the captain of the have-nots in a game against the haves (when “have” represents any modicum of talent). And being a wise young fellow even then I put myself in as opening batsman. My reason was totally sensible: the opening batsman faces the bowlers at their fittest and most aggressive. I wouldn’t last an over! (For the benefit for non-cricketers, an over is six balls.)

My innings was a triumph. For some reason not a single bowler managed to hit my wickets and by a miracle of almost religious proportions, if the ball did collide with my bat the subsequent bounce was never caught. I was not-out at the end of the day! I had faced the best and survived! I was a hero.

Even today I rather like cricket. As something to watch rather than participate in. But I like it, even appreciate the misfortunes of players who inadvertently get themselves out. I didn’t.

© Peter Rogerson 07.07.15