Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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Once again, a Tuesday brings us face-to-face with the internet's hottest feature. The one in which the first person to comment gets to pick the topic of the day!
But what might that topic be?
Could it be art, films, flans, plans, books, bagels, cooks, nooks, crooks, ducks, drakes, pixies, rocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, larders, Ladas, mystery, mayhem, molluscs, Moorcock, May Day, mangoes, bongos, drongoes, bingo, Ringo, Pingu, Ringu, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, Marvin the paranoid android, Brookside Close, Ramsay Street, Coronation Street, Albert Square, Scarlet Street, Dead End Street, chickenpox, the Equinox, parallelograms, rhomboids, androids, asteroids, The Good Life, the Next Life, pomegranates, granite, marble, marbles, maples, staples, fables, stables, sofas, eggs, pegs, legs, dregs, moons and supermoons, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, backpacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, draft excluders, blockheads, blackheads, dunderheads, deadheads, webheads, flowerpots, Bill and Ben, Ben and Jerry, Tom and Jerry, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, dodos, Dido, Soho, Solo, silos, windows, day-glo, glue, Gloy, Bostik, pancakes, pizzas, pastas, pastors, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Tomorrow People, Forever People, Party People, Sheila Steafel, steeples, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slumps, sumps, sunshine, slime, soup, sandwiches, servants, Sultanas, Santana, Sultans, grapes, grappling or sandcastles?
It could be.
But, then again, it might not.
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16 comments:
The world championships of conkers takes place in two Sundays!!! And as you know King Charlie of the Bolshie People’s Republic of the East Side of Chicago has scottish heritage. Hence King Charlie learned of this sport reading Dandy and Oor Wullie. King Charlie is just curious if any of you played as kids? Was it fun? Also there are rumors that this year’s batch of horse chestnuts are compromised due to the extreme heat of your summer and that 50 will cost you 250 pounds on ebay? Thoughts?
Thanks for the topic, Charlie.
Playing conkers is never fun because the conkers tend to hit your knuckles, at high speed, and they're very hard.
Generally, one doesn't buy horse chestnuts. One goes out and collects them from the wild.
King Charlie - I briefly played conkers at junior school, soaking my said conker in vinegar/baking it(an adult must have done this) (in line with current wisdom), to increase its power. Unfortunately, my conker still did not win!
Phillip
I think for those who buy their conkers the cost will depend on where and when they get them Charlie. If they haven't already done it, best get a move on, before £1 = $1.
Not to mention the euro, although I am quite looking forward to parity with the pound there - the current British government will have created a de facto single European currency! Thats right up there with the Conservative and Unionist party putting a border in the Irish Sea.
Brexit really is the gift that keeps on giving.
-sean
Oops. Apologies for mentioning the Brexit, Steve.
-sean
Well… Pleasegive KC your honest opinion… King Charlie may retire around 2025. He understands that one only needs to show up to be a participant in the World Championship. The tournament provides your horse chest nut. Is there a chance that at age 64 KC could challenge for the world championship??? Or does youth have its inherent advantages in Conkers too?
I never used to like conkers because I like conkers - I find them very pleasing as objects - and I used to hate the fact that people were trying to smash yours up. And it hurt, often more than it had to because the kids who played conkers weren’t very nice.
Do kids still play conkers? I keeps seeing them all over the place, no-one seems to pick them up any more.
Theres only one way to find out if you could do it KC - get yourself and your sunshine band to the championship, and give it a go.
-sean
SEAN! That is a great idea. And if the exchange rate between the pound and dollar continues the current trend King Charlie may try to corner the market on collectible Dennis the Menace, dandy, Beano, etc.!!! If only UK shipping postage wasn’t so doggone high!!!
I loved the scoring with conkers, you started as a "none-er" (or no wins) and you could , if you won your first game go straight to a "ten-er" ( 10 wins). So if you beat a guy that had won 9 games prior to playing you and you won you got one point for beating him or her and then you got his or her 9 wins. It was always a big "scalp" and the talk of the playgound if you beat a player whose conker had won lots of games.
I too played conkers a few times. Stupid game. I preferred marbles.
I never played conkers. I don’t think I ever even knew what they were until today. Fascinating.
Hey, Steve, if you’re planning on doing a ‘Marvel Lucky Bag - 50 Years Ago’ post for October, there were a few Halloween-adjacent comics items cover-dated that month in 1972. It was a skip-month for both TOMB OF DRACULA and WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, but Marvel did publish a few other tasty fear-fests : FEAR 10 (with the Man-Thing), MARVEL SPOTLIGHT 6 (Ghost Rider), JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY 1 and MONSTERS ON THE PROWL 19.
Even better, Len and Bernie’s classic SWAMP THING 1 hit the spinner racks that month, plus THE DEMON 2, new issues of GHOSTS, HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, SECRETS OF SINISTER HOUSE, UNEXPECTED, and THE WITCHING HOUR.
But wait, there’s more! Charlton had new issues of GHOST MANOR, GHOSTLY TALES and HAUNTED — Gold Key had DARK SHADOWS, BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY and HANNA-BARBERA’S SCOOBY-DOO — Warren had new issues of all 3 of their mags, CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA — Skywald had a new NIGHTMARE — Eerie Pubs had HORROR TALES, TERROR TALES and WEIRD — even Archie got into the spirit, with SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH 9, plus the second issue of their oddball CHILLING ADVENTURES IN SORCERY comic in its pre-Gray Morrow iteration (by Archie regulars Frank Doyle, Dan DeCarlo and Stan Goldberg).
Lots of terrorific treats that month. Thought you might like to know….
b.t.
I played conkers way back in the day but we had different rules down in Hertfordshire to Mc Scotty's.
A brand new conker started as a 1-er and whenever there was a match, the winner needed up taking the sum of the two cookers. When an x-er played a y-er the winner was an (x+y)-er. That way a conker's number represented the bonkers itself and all the beaten conkers behind it. Much more logical.
Any, yes, conkers with big scores were spoken of in hushed tones in the playground.
Ah, the well known 'Hertfordshire Rules'. I liked the use of an equation, dangermash - impressively conkers bonkers.
-sean
Bt, thanks for the Horror Lucky Bag list. I'll see how much of it I can incorporate.
b.t. if you think conkers was fascinating then you would have loved "stones" or "dibs" which I think is more commonly known as Jacks. As kids we played it with pebbles \or small stomes. You would throw 5 or so "stones" in the air and try catch them on the back of your hand. If you caught 3 stones you could then discard these stones and throw the 2 other stones in the air and try get them on the back of your hand etc. The person that did this in the fewest attempts won. Maybe you had to be there as it was fun......honest.
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