Conker Season

One of the lovely things about being in London is a real and proper fall. The weather turns, the leaves start to fall and conkers arrive! Conkers?! What are conkers?! Well conkers are actually horse-chestnuts, or rather a game that all children in the British Isles grew up playing called conkers. It's a fairly simple game with two players. Each player finds a chestnut and ties it to a bit of string. Then the players square off and smack the hell out of each other's chestnuts 'til one of them breaks...and thus the player with the surviving chestnut becomes the reigning conker-er!

The path pictured above is part of my walk to Uni. It is a veritable conker ally.

For me chestnuts always bring up childhood memories of Vienna. There, chestnuts or konkers are known as Kastanien or if they are the edible kind of chestnut (you know the ones we sing about at Christmas time) they are known as Maroni. I use to love picking up the glossy shiny (shiny in a very earthy not plasticy way) chestnuts on my walk to kindergarten with my dad through the Schönbrunn Palace gardens and I can still hear the street vendors shouting "heisse Maroni!!" (hot roasted chestnuts!)

Ah fall...I have missed you...

I couldn't resist getting up close and personal.