Transcript:

CONKERS - Professional SportMusicHere's a program from our archives.This month, British schoolboys are engaged in a search for the hardest chestnut they can find. It's the most important ingredient in the game of conkers. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Bore a hole though a chestnut, thread it with a length of string, knot one end and you've got yourself a conker. Now, this is a two-person game, in which each player, swinging his conker bolo-style, tries to hit the other player's chestnut and break it. The player with the surviving conker wins. Right now we're listening to the sound of a game in action.ambience: ConkersOlder conkers enthusiasts have evolved sets of rules, clubs, and even regional competitions."When it comes to the Pearl World Conker Championships, we have rather hijacked the children's game and turned it into a spectator sport."John Hadman is the Secretary of the Ashton Conkers Club in Northamptonshire. He says that making conkers a competitive sport meant establishing strict standards to ensure fair play. For starters, they've banned the practice of making unconquerable conkers."In children's games anything goes, and certainly it has been known that they've been pickled in vinegar, baked in the oven, kept from one year to the next, so they get really hard, and have to be polished with brown boot polish to make them look new and shiny. More modern methods have been to coat them with super glue, all sorts of things like that."Game officials now hand-pick thousands of horse chestnuts of uniform size and shape, and they precision drill and thread them. Players must use the official conkers, and receive a new one with each match. We've been listening to a program from our archives. Check out our website, pulseplanet.com for a link to my latest project - a novel. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.