A Dribble of Ink

Snagged from Metro News:

Let me pose you a question:

If you could live in one Fantasy world, where you woud pick?

It’s a common question – one asked in comicbook shops/dimly-lit basements and on schoolgrounds around the world. My answer is always quick, always assured.

“‘The Shire’ in Middle-Earth” It’s easy. Tolkien’s seminal setting might be a cliche, and some of his more magical towns (the magic of Rivendell) and cities (the grandeur of pre-catastrophe Osgiliath) might be a more obvious or romantic choices, but The Shire, and Hobbiton in particular, have always held a special place in my heart. From the moment I first cracked open The Hobbit and was introduced to Bilbo’s home, I was in love.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Who doesn’t want to live in such a home?

It looks like such a delightful place in which to curl up beside a fire, good book in one hand, glass of wine in the other and a quiet evening ahead. (I do have to admit, though, they dropped the ball by not including a round door.)

Even the floorplan for the house is cute:

This Welsh homestead reminiscent of ‘Bag End’, the underground home famously inhabited by Frodo and Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, was constructed in just four mouths, for an astounding £3,000 (€3,430; $4,700), using chopped-down wood for floors and layers of earth for a roof.

All for under five thousand bucks? Sign me up. I had a treefort as a kid. My parents poured all their love and affection for me and my brothers into that fort, it’s at the centre of countless fond memories of the adventures I had as a child… but I’d take a hobbit house any day of the week. It’s wonderful what can happen when elbow grease and inspiration collide.