[Nory] liked when things had layers—the earth has layers, the trunk of a tree has layers, the atmosphere has layers. A conker has layers, too. It has a green spiky outer layer and a very shiny wonderful layer which is the conker itself, which is like the finest smoothest wood in a very precious table or the knob of a chair or something like that, in a great palace like Ickworth House, where the floorboards are curved. (They were somehow bent into curves with the help of steam engines, which pleased Littleguy.) And then inside that there's the growing part of the conker, which is like the nerve of the tooth. Sometimes you can find a double-conker. 'Conker' is the English way of saying horse chestnut, and it's a very good way because they can suddenly conk you on the head.
-Nicholson Baker, The Everlasting Story of Nory, 74.
2 comments:
I love conkers, aka horse chestnuts, aka buckeyes. We found a whole crop outside Williston one year, and every Fall I'm on the lookout for more, but with no success. Yet. To construct an analogy, conkers are to Autumn as blue sea glass is to the ocean.
I remember the buckeyes! I also remember my overpowering urge was to throw them at someone, anyone. They're just so throwable! But I resisted hocking them at you and instead threw them a the mighty bricks of Williston. Bricks don't bruise.
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