Conkers, lovely conkers!

Tuner, engineer, rider

- Pip Higham

“Hey luv, ’ave you seen my conkers?” My inter-rogative request fell on deaf ears, but the little beauties I’d foraged that very morning on our stroll through Clifton Country Park re-lit yet another memory trail. Have you noticed that kids aren’t interested in conkers these days? Or catapults, pea guns, Meccano? Or digging holes, or lighting fires, climbing trees or takin’ stuff to bits. When me and our kid were (well, kids) we made bats out of branches and bits of inner tube, then pea-guns, then pea-rifles in our shed. They started off RAF (rough as….), but rapidly improved in every respect. They looked better, worked better and we could hit a cocoa tin at 10 yards. From there we went on to make crossbows (oiks!) and then via Bako, Meccano and push bikes we started systematically dismantling, and occasionally fixing, anything with a piston.