"WTF are conkers?", said the sheltered American.

The horse chesnut tree drops horse chesnuts (derrr) which are solid and about an inch-ish in size.

A conker is a non-edible version of this, which in the days gone by (due to new health and safety laws which state that if you are to play a game of conkers, you must now wear goggles and be suppervised, which lead to a blanket ban on the game in schools, damn killjoys..) you would put a hole through the conker, thread a string through it, tie a knot in the end and let it hang.

The game is played with two people standing opposite each other, both with conkers, and the aim of the game is to break the opposing conker using your own. you take it in turns to swing at a conker that is held at the length of its string.

With each winm the conker gains a number, so a fiver would have defeated 5 other conkers in battle

And just as an addenum, if I were to show up with a conker that was on it's first time out and I defeated davethefish's fiver, that tally would be transferred to mine and mine would become a sixer.

At this point, DTF would become highly enraged and acuse me of either baking my conker or soaking it in vinegar. A fight of terrifying ferocity would ensue, during the course of which the state mandated safety goggles would appear more and more redundant.

Eventually DTF would wrestle my conker from me to crush it under his heel and we would both leave the theatre of conker-war feeling dazed, crushed and confused, but ultimately stronger and a little wiser.

Or leastways that's how I remember it.

And I would stand back and watch the hilarity ensue...cheering "fight, fight, fight!". and laughing with all of the other kids