Nuts 1

We did not see any red squirrels while on the Isle of Wight, but we came home to find that the gray squirrels had been busy on our main nut tree, with the immature nut crop stripped off the tree and left lying on the ground. Pretty much every nut had been broken into.

There could not have been much inside, but I imagine that there must have been something for the squirrels to be so thorough. Perhaps they like immature nuts - rather in the way that we like immature beans and immature rape in salad.

Whatever the case, they have been in the tree on most mornings since our return, just to make sure there are none left for us on St. Crispin's day, the 14th October, the traditional start of the nut season and, as it happens, the day of the patron saint of the long bow. At least that is what I had thought, but it seems to be yet another case of my memory playing tricks on me.

I can trace no association of St. Crispin and nuts, with his martyrdom involving mill stones rather than nuts. The best I can do is St. Philbert's day, the 20th August, in the middle of the nut season in France, with nuts ripening on that day being called filberts rather than cobs. Second best is Holy Cross day, the 14th September, a traditional day for nutting in Elizabethan England. With Agincourt being on the 25th October.

So one can see how I came to be wrong, but I had rather have been right.

The only good news is that I have learned that at about the same time of year it was customary for courting couples to put a cluster of good looking cob nuts into a small fire. If the nuts burned together quietly, all was going to be well. But if the nuts, in burning, burst apart, the union was like to be discordant.

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