There is one Christmas story from when my father first arrived in the UK, 43 years ago, that can still make me howl with laughter. It was a cold winter and my dad had been gripped by the idea of roasting chestnuts. He had grown up in the southern hemisphere, in a former British colony, so despite the fact that his Christmases were hot – spent in shorts and flip-flops – he had been surrounded by images of snowy churches, robin redbreasts, holly, ivy and, yes, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
And so, he headed out to Clapham Common in south London to collect conkers. They were chestnuts, after all. Horse chestnuts but hey, that’s still a chestnut. Or so he thought. And so, that evening when his British friends arrived at the house where he was staying, they were greeted by the suspiciously acrid smell of about 30 conkers, baking away in the little gas oven, plus a wild-haired man in his 20s primed to chomp into his tray of baked poison.
