A fictional national emergency committee has convened after discovering that unpredictable weather could interfere with adults hitting chestnuts against other chestnuts on bits of string.
Years of warnings about infrastructure, agriculture and public health had received careful consideration. The prospect of a compromised conker season has prompted immediate demands for a cross-party approach and somebody who knows a good tree.
An invented sporting official described the situation as unprecedented, except for all the other recent unprecedented weather. Contingency plans include inspecting the school field, phoning a cousin in Gloucestershire and asking whether anyone kept a decent one from last year.
A proposed strategic conker reserve encountered difficulties when members could not agree whether soaking constituted adaptation or cheating. The disagreement briefly produced more heat than the committee’s draft emissions strategy could account for.
In the imagined emergency session, delegates rejected synthetic alternatives on the grounds that a plastic chestnut would destroy the integrity of a sport involving a chestnut on a string. A consultant suggested calling it resilience. This improved its funding prospects without improving the tree.
The meeting concluded with unanimous agreement that something must be done. For the first time in the climate debate, every participant meant before Sunday.
