LOTR Conventions

[davem]

Anyone going to Oxonmoot in September?
Its the Tolkien Society's annual 'get together in Oxford.
I went for the for the first time last year. There're talks, & a bit of a shindig on Saturday night. On Sunday there's a visit to the Professor's grave.
It was good, but 'odd' in a way, to walk through Oxford, go for a beer in the 'Bird & Baby', the pub where the Inklings met every Thursday morning (there are photographs of them & a signed letter to the Landlord, thanking him for the meal they'd just eaten, framed on the wall). Priscilla, Tolkien's daughter was there - at Oxonmoot, not in the pub! - (& so was Ted Naismith, who's something of a regular attender.)
The visit to the cemetary was moving, someone read out the passage from Towers, where Frodo & Sam part from Faramir. Then someone else sang Galadriel's lament.After that I had a moment to kneel by the grave & touch the earth.
Thing is, I don't know whether to go back again. Maybe its better to keep it special, as a kind of 'one off' event.
This year its a four day event as opposed to the usual three, because this year would have been Tolkien's Elevnty-First birthday.
So, is anyone attending? Also, anyone attending Tolkien 2005? Its a big international event in Birmingham (the one in England!) celebrating 50 years of LotR?

[ April 10, 2003: Message edited by: davem ]

[ April 10, 2003: Message edited by: davem ]