monkey nuts

I've just come back from the North-East, and left the snow behind. We had a bit of everything, little light attempts at snow, big swirling flakes, and a sleet storm just waiting for me. At the bottom of the street my old schoolfriend Alan keeps a greengrocer's shop, and the smell of Christmas trees heaped up outside was enough to bring every good Christmas back to life.

When I was small, Mum and Dad would buy monkey nuts - peanuts in their shells - and we'd thread them on something like carpet thread, so we could hang them up for the birds. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table with my sister, making long strings of nuts and then watching at the window to see the bluetits swinging and pecking at them. So this week, I took some coarse bead thread and a packet of monkey nuts, found a biggish needle, and sat down to blissful nostalgia. The idea, of course, is to put the needle through the shells, not the nuts.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO PEANUTS THESE DAYS? It was like drilling through rock! And maybe the bead thread was the wrong kind, because even when I forced the things over the eye of the needle they sat there and refused to go down without a fight. I borrowed Mum's thimble. I tried impaling the peanuts on to the needle and pushing them down. It snapped. Peanuts one, needle nil. In the end the birds got two little chains about eight inches long because I didn't want to risk any more of Mum's veteran needles.

I was five years old when I first threaded peanuts and I didn't have this problem. Are these the wrong kind of peanuts?