There are many reasons to love Wylde’s brilliant co-founder. This week her growing office conker collection has been one of them. Wonderfully eccentric of course - in a 28 year old woman - but all the more charming because of that.
In the end though, and no matter how old we are, don’t we all just love conkers? They’re so beautiful. Their sheen so fleeting. So perfectly desirable; their smooth shapes and irridescent browns urging you, willing you, to pick them up. Impossible to ignore. And impossible to preserve.
Conkers are then, perhaps, an ideal totem for seasonality: real, palpable, observable, and yet inherently ephemeral.
Because that is the magic of seasons, isn’t it? That, with all their majesty, they come - and then they go. And so the lesson, probably, is to do as Ella has done with her conkers - to throw oneself, wholeheartedly, unapologetically, into the season.
To embrace it. To understand it. To celebrate its impermanence; especially - I think - when it comes to food.
PS - I was so happy to see organic corn on the cobs back on the market this week. I’m obsessed with elotes (ay-lot-ays), the Mexican street corn that’s slathered in mayonnaise and grated cheese. Check out the little video below.