Blimey! The Barmy Limeys Go Bonkers on Conkers! Crikey!

Ed Daley, who posts on both The Daley Gator and The Daily Benefactor excerpts an article from The Sun:

BARMY health and safety decisions could be given the chop, under plans being considered by the Government.

There was a steady rise of "nonsense" rulings made by town councils under the Labour government, according to Tory peer Lord Young.

They created a culture of fear, which led to events such as the 200-year-old tradition of down-hill cheese-rolling in Brockworth, Glous, being cancelled for safety reasons.

Other barmy health and safety measures introduced in the last decade include children being banned from playing conkers at school and a restaurant not giving out toothpicks for fear of injuring customers.

Banning the cheese rolling and toothpicks are one thing, but complaining about banning conkers is another. Conkers is a game where two children each put one bullet in their revolvers and spin the cylinders. They then take turns... Wait... what?

Conkers: The popular name for the horsechestnut, and for the game played with them, suspended on a string.

The modern game of conkers is replete with its own etiquette and terminology, including the scoring by which a victorious conker takes on the score of its defeated opponent (e.g. if a ten-er beats a six-er it becomes a seventeen-er, 10 +6 + 1). Your opponent can stamp on your conker if you drop it unless you shout ‘Bagsie no stampsies’ first; a ‘cheesecutter’ was a conker with a flat side; the cry to claim first hit varies from place to place but always has to rhyme with ‘conker’:

Iddy iddy onker, my first conker
Iddy iddy oh, my first go

Never mind!


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