Bonkers for Conkers!

Autumn has always been my favourite season.

It includes my birthday, Halloween, Bonfire night, and a chance to put the heating on, stay indoors all cosy, watch films, light candles, and eat chocolate!

But outside, one of my favourite things about autumn, alongside the lovely colours of nature, is conkers.

I’ve always loved conkers.

The shininess of them, the different shapes and sizes, and obviously playing conkers as a kid.

Remember how you’d try your best to make your conker as indestructible as possible, after you’d threaded it on the shoelace? 

To ‘conquer’ your opponent, by smashing theirs to pieces?! 🙌

Do they still do such things, kids these days; coating conkers in nail varnish and vinegar?! 

Good wholesome playground games!

I even remember ordering and enjoying the book ‘The Conker as Hard as a Diamond’ from the Puffin Book Club at junior school! (and I know full well that book is still in the loft in one of my properties! 😆 #hoarder)

Even now, decades later, I still get excited by seeing conkers when I walk round the park with my dog Jerry Lee. 

Bizarrely he gets less excited about them than me!

"Ooooh Jerry, look at this one!!!"

"Yeah, very good love, walk on..."

I called these little brown beauties ‘jewels of nature’, and when I come across them I get a little excited and start collecting them.

Today in the park I even tied the dog to the fence for two minutes and climbed over the fence to collect more, that nobody else had spotted.

You simply would not believe that I was 40 years of age! 🤣

It's superb when you find a really good big shiny one!

Conkers I mean; don’t be vulgar!!! 😱

“But what do you even do with them?” I hear you ask... “You’re a grown woman!”

Yes I know.... 🙄

And for me, the excitement is in finding them.

So these days, I don’t partake in conker-bashing competitions (and not just because other adults don’t partake in that sort of thing! 😆)

What I do with them is this: I keep one or two super-pretty conkers (yes, there is such a thing! 😆) and then with the rest of the pile, I put them on my garden wall next to the main footpath.

My logic is that kids will take them as they walk past from school - maybe kids who don’t know where the conkers are locally - but more likely, kids who never get to go to the park, or perhaps their parents never bother taking them... sadly, we know what some lazy parents are like in today’s society. 😞

This makes me feel a bit sad to think that some kids rarely get to experience nature outdoors. 

But at least they’ll get a chance to have their own conker by my little wall-sharing tactic. 

And it must work, because there are never any conkers left on my wall at the end of each day. 😁

So what’s the point of my blog?

Apart from me rambling on about conkers, which I’m sure you've worked out by now I’m a big fan of!

Let’s make this blog useful, by taking some lessons from my little conker anecdotes. 

Make this blog more of a fable, if you will; a story with some lessons. 

Here we go:

⁃ Beauty is all around us - you just have to look for it. 

We are so lucky to have such lovely nature in this country.

⁃ It’s great when you find something that nobody else has found. Even if it means you have to go searching for it. 

This is symbolic of opportunities in life.

⁃ If you have plenty, you should share it with people who are less fortunate than you. 

You don’t need to be greedy and keep everything to yourself.

⁃ Please take your kids to the park and the great outdoors. 

Get them off the screens for a while, and get some fresh air in their lungs and dirt on their hands. 

It’s really good for their wellbeing.

So bit of a bizarre topic to write about today, but thanks for reading!

And if you’ve made it this far, then you must be bonkers for conkers too!! 😁👍

Have a lovely Autumn, and stay safe and well x x x

Kellyann Martin is a Property Investment Strategist based in Leeds, who when not foraging for conkers, is busy foraging for property investment opportunities!

For more details on working with Kellyann, visit the website

www.kellyannmartin.co.uk