Saw a Dead Penguin?

This weekend we went to look at a potential new house.  An 18th century property with gardens stretching over an acre, and nearly in the middle of no-where.  I like it, in fact I think I've fallen in love with it.  It does literally take a couple of minutes to get to the bottom of the garden and it has trees and ponds and several sheds and summer houses scattered around the grounds.  And it has a collection of beautiful flora including a Monkey Puzzle and a Maple tree that had scattered it's bright yellow leaves all over the place.  It also has a cheggy tree!

When I were a lad we went out cheggying in the Autumn.  Posh kids brought "conkers" to school, the mentally posh kids would have brought "horse chestnuts" (We didn't have any of these kids in our school, they wouldn't have survived), but most of us brought cheggies in.  I still remember Derek Hunter's legendary cheggy, he had baked it and placed it in vinegar several times and it survived 3 Autumns.  By the last Autumn it looked like an aged walnut or a small brain or a withered testicle but it was still going strong.  The day someone smashed it everyone was talking about it.  I imagine that will be the cheggy I remember most in my life.

O, and I think I saw a dead penguin on the motorway this morning!

"Amongst the Maple Leaves"