The Tolkien Coming of Age Club 2

[Lalwendë]

*Sigh* - I was 12 when I first read the books. Wish I could have that experience all over again... My Mum always says that if there were no books in the house then I would read the cornflake box; I've always been a bookworm. I remember learning to read from looking at maps, wondering where all the lines went. And then reading 'There was an old woman who swallowed a fly' at playschool to my friend Andrew - and then no doubt he would have gone and eaten something from the sandpit, he was that kind of boy.

When we moved to the house where my Dad was born (I guess you could say he moved back) there were lots of old tumbledown barns to be pulled down so for a while the big garden was like a battleground full of trenches, and we used to play 'War!' - the exclamation mark was very important to the game. Then we made 'the greenhouse tavern', stealing pint glasses and making 'pints' out of muddy water in them. We used to find clay pipes buried all over the place and pretend to smoke them, filling them with dust and blowing it out.

Mark - that might make an interesting thread - 'What's your Sharkey's Mill?'.