This Side of the Pond

My mother was a champion in her schooldays at the only sport that mattered. She could wield a conker like no other, earning the respect of many a peer, and it was decades before anyone figured out the reason for her success.

At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering what a conker is and why anyone would want to wield one, and that’s a reasonable line of thought. You have the delightful gifts of nature we know as conkers in North America, although you call them by the more sensible name of horse chestnuts, but the playground activity of smacking them against each other doesn’t seem to have cross...