[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Next time I'm in Oxford I'll be tempted to make the same journey, although I fear that if I attempted to climb over a fence at that time of night I would topple off the fence in a most undignified way.

It's certainly a journey well worth making during the day. Aside from anything else, I think that a taxi is the only form of public transport that will bring one to the cemetery. If you are prone to falling avoid the fence at all costs: it's double-layered, one side being wire links, the other a short fence of iron stakes. Slip on that and it's the casualty ward for you.

I think we ought to hook up Robert Jordan's word processor and see if we can establish a correlation between WPM and RPM.

I believe that this would be an extremely valuable experiment. Aside from anything else we would immediately have an objective measure of how badly divergent something is from Tolkien's own vision. The ratio of revolutions to words in a minute can be placed on a "Travesty Scale", on which 0 would be something written and published by Tolkien, with which he was content, and 100+ would be a situation comedy based around the Fall of Gondolin, animated by Ralph Bakshi. At last we would no longer have to debate whether or not something was an insult to Tolkien, for we would have his own RPM/WPM ratio to tell us. I suggest that we set up a proving experiment as soon as possible.

Not only have you put a smile on my lips and brought a tear to my eye, but you've given me a much needed picker-upper (I've been in bed sick for three days now).

Get well soon, phantom. I'm glad to have played some small part in your recovery.

My theory is that Mr. Tolkien made for you to come by scaring (though that is not the right word) everyone away.

I suspect that if I'd made any more of a hash of his poem he would have scared me away as well; possibly with a sudden assault of Finnish accusitives. I shared my experience with everyone because I know how far away some of you are, and I wanted to give you some impression of what it's like to visit Tolkien. Of course if your appetite is sufficiently whetted by my account that it leads you to visit in person then so much the better.

[ February 18, 2003: Message edited by: Squatter of Amon Rudh ]