The act of sunbathing was in south-east Wexford long ago known as saakin. In parts of Ulster the term was beekin. You could also beek in front of a fire, as a correspondent, John Boyd from Belfast, knows; what he wants to know is where the word came from.
You'll find this verb frequently in both Scots and English literature. Symmons, in a polemic entitled Vindication of Charles I, written in 1648, rants on about "That Pope of Rome when he lay beaking himself in the midst of his luxuries had cause to cry". "She and her cat sit beekin in her yard," wrote the Scots poet Ramsey in 1725. Long before that, in or about 1400, the stern author of Ywaine wrote: "That knyght es nothing to set by That leve sal his chevalry, And ligges beakand in his bed, When he haves a lady wed."
To beek also meant to heat wood at a fire in order to make it more pliable. It was done by shipwrights in the old days and is still done by basket-makers. As to origin, here we have a classic example of the dangers of jumping to conclusions in matters of etymology. Obviously related to bake (from Old English bacan, Old Norse baka), you might think. As Oxford points out, an Old Teutonic bokian, from bok, past tense of bakan would have given Old English boecan, becan, and Middle English beke, beek but, alas, no trace of the older forms exist. So the origin of John Boyd's word is uncertain.
Blighty - England in the language of British servicemen overseas - is troubling a man from Monkstown, Co Dublin, who doesn't want his name mentioned. This word is Anglo-Indian but most authorities go back to the Arabic wilayat, realm, which gave Urdu walayate and Hindi vilayati and bilayati.
Another correspondent wants to know why a Dutchman was called Klosh by soldiers from his native Hampshire. This is an attempt at the Dutch Klaas, an abbreviation of Nicolaas, Nicholas, a favourite name in Holland.
Paula Hayes of Sutton asks about the game of conkers. Alas no longer popular, she says. She asks if the word conker dervies from conquer.
No. The game was first played with sea shells, it appears. Later children who lived far from the sea substituted chestnuts but retained the French name conque, "the shelle of shelle-fische" as Randle Cotgrave's engaging French-English dictionary of 1611 put it.