In a hovel in a town there lived a little boy approaching 8 summers. He was a lover of all things in nature and spent countless hours in the nearby
fields and meadows of long waving grasses, buttercups, daisies and dandelions. This was a much appreciated life of peace and long warm days of tranquility. Then, one day in the quiet of this boy’s world, as the days of summer continued with much less noise and far more green, he awoke and remembered it was his eighth birthday. With eyes wide in both hope and anticipation, he leapt from his bed to see if his parents had bought him a bike, but his expectations were dashed when all they handed him was a small package covered in brown paper tied with jute string.
The boy smiled respectfully at them as he took the wrapping off the flat rectangular gift. As the wrapping fell to the floor his smile waned to nothingness. It was just a book. With his heart heavy at the thought of his friends riding their bikes, shooting across
the old iron bridge that sat above the town river, he turned the book to its front. There on the cover he read aloud its title.
“The
Hobbit”.
He looked up at his father and asked, “What’s a Hobbit Dad?”
His father simply smiled and said, “You will just have to read it and find out.”
The boy felt his mood darken as the pitter-patter of heavy rain began pounding the windows. Outside, the clouds darkened as if they wished to rain further on his misery. He trudged back to his bedroom and donned his woollen dressing gown then sighed a little as he sat on the bottom of his bed to put his slippers on.
‘OK’, he thought, ‘Let’s see what this JRR Tol..keein story is about.’ He picked up the disappointing present and began to read.
‘The Hobbit. Chapter One. An Unexpected Party.’ The rain continued dampening his
spirits as he read the first sentence. ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit…’
By the first snows of the following winter the book was well thumbed, many pages became dog-eared, and the boy was on his fifth completed reading of
Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected adventure.
The boy of course was me, and my 8th birthday was way back in 1967. I got the bike for my 9th birthday and was disappointed once more as I wanted ‘
The Lord of the Rings’. There’s just no pleasing some kids!
I spent the next 40 years thinking it was just me that liked
Tolkien’s magical and scary world. Then the first of Peter Jackson’s trilogy appeared and it seemed to me the world had gone mad!!! Somehow, there were millions of like-minded ‘normal’ people.
Being an avid reader of words on wood pulp and ignoring the strange business of electronic stuff and nonsense, the internet passed me by, like a paper boat on a slow moving silent stream, quietly floating past in the night; unseen and unheard.
Of course, my wife and children had been using the internet for years, constantly haranguing me to, ‘get with it…’.
Eventually, in the last couple of years I succumbed to the
evil that wasn’t made from natural
materials and found that it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Then one evening, whilst typing, (not on a proper typewriter, might I add) a search on Tolkien info revealed a site called ‘The Tolkien Forum’.
Now, although I wouldn’t think of myself as a proper user of this platform (hah! There I go sounding like I know the jargon) I find writing to other fans of JRR somewhat pleasing and fruitful. I have learnt many aspects of the lore and meanings therein I never expected to. The opinions of others with regard to Tolkien’s works, the films and Amazon’s annoying but spectacular
Rings of Power (Yes, I watched it, warts and all) has been thoroughly amazing.
So, thanks to you, the other creators, the moderators and the other fan members, I find myself thinking of my halcyon days as a little boy wishing other people liked
Bilbo,
Thorin and his
dwarves, and the strange wizard who made an innocent creature into a ‘Thief’.
I cannot see myself leaving anytime soon, and although I don’t use the internet very much, it is great to know you are all here.