As you’re hopefully aware, The World Conkers Championship took place yesterday in Southwick (pron. “Suth-ick”), Northamptonshire. In these dark times, the annual championship makes me proud to be British.
The BBC reported live on the event, here. As always in sport, men triumphed over women. Extracts from the BBC report:
“The new World Conkers Champion is Matt Cross from Lincolnshire.
Cross, 37 from Bourne, in Lincolnshire, is now King Conker and the World Conkers Champion.
Queen Conker is Margaret Blake from Corby, Northamptonshire.
Matt is now the world champion, beating Mags Blake in a short battle [J4MB emphasis. By “short battle” the BBC lady reporter means “Matt Cross’s conker and/or his technique was (or were) much better than Mags Blake’s”. To be fair, that’s a bit long-winded, but you get the point.] after they took the respective King Conker and Queen Conker titles.” [J4MB: Whoa, hold it right there! So men and women have their own conkers competitions? I think that tells us all we need to know about male v female performance in general.]
Men’s prowess in sports remains unchallenged. It makes me proud to be a man.
My late father lived most of his adult life in Northamptonshire, a little-visited but quite beautiful county, other than the town of Corby, obviously. The only good thing ever associated with Corby was the trouser press, invented by Peter Corby. The presses were first manufactured in Windsor, later in Andover (from 1986), then Peterlee (from 2005). For the avoidance of doubt, never in Corby.
To drive into Northamptonshire, one good way is to turn west off the M1. Ah, I hear you ask, but at which junctions? I applied the full might of AI technology to the question, a Google search revealing:
“Here are the M1 junctions that are east of Northamptonshire, starting with the nearest:
- Junction 19 (Catthorpe Interchange): This is the easternmost junction directly bordering Northamptonshire. It’s a major intersection with the M6 and M1, and the A14.
- Junction 20: This junction lies further east than Junction 19 and serves the A426 and M69.
- Junction 21: This junction is located east of Junction 20 and serves the A46.
- Junction 22: This junction serves the A50 and is located east of Junction 21.”
Northamptonshire has a curious tradition of place names being pronounced quite differently to what you might expect. Somewhere I have a photograph of a friend, Christine, and myself, looking downcast, holding empty wine glasses near our lips by a sign on the approach road to the small hamlet of Nobottle (pron “Nottle”). It borders the Althorp estate, which owns much of the property in the hamlet. Also a photograph of my beloved young daughters (looking somewhat put upon, for some unknown reason) standing next to a street sign in the village of Silverstone, where you will find the Silverstone Circuit which hosts the British Grand Prix. The sign reads, “Silverstone: Please drive carefully”.
In the early 90s Nigel Mansell won a British Grand Prix – I forget which, having little interest in motor racing – after gaining a few seconds every lap over several laps before overtaking the race leader (possibly Ayrton Senna or Nikki Lauda or Alain Prost, some foreigh chap, anyway) and going on to win the race. The overtaking took place right in front of me – and not in the view of 99% of the fans that day, one of the joys of motor racing as a sport – and was surely the most exciting sporting moment I’ve ever witnessed in person. My main memory of the day, however, is taking three or four hours to leave the muddy quagmire of a field laughingly described as the “car park”.
The World Conker Championships, the pronunciation of Northamptonshire place names, amusing road signs, and Formula 1 motor racing… be honest, how many other websites explore these important issues in a single blog piece? None, that’s how many.
Have a good week.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Fascinating. I look forward to the Bindel article when a “TRANs” person wins “Queen Conker”. If nothing else the feminist civil war (TERF Wars) has served to highlight the number of competitive activities where there are women only competitions. Most surprising to me being Chess where clearly having greater bone density, muscle mass and lung capacity can’t be the reason ……. begs the question why then women’s “safety” requires separation. Much the same for Conkers i would have thought.
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On the topic of single sex events this popped up Tower Hamlets mayor defends mosque decision to ban women and girls over the age of 12 from taking part in charity fun-run | The Standard
Of course in fact this is perfectly legal, and there are many women only fun runs etc. done for charities every year, with no furore. Private clubs etc. can do this and its only spinelessness that “forces” clubs to admit women when they do. I’ll enjoy this as the “Intersectionalists try to figure out what is more important, sexism or racism.
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