in a tall, thin house

So I spent the long weekend in the deepest countryside, where cellphones dare not to lift their puny antennae, in a tall, thin house like unto that of Tolkien's Mr. Bliss but without the Girabbit, but with a pasture with cows grazing, and with the Lonely Mountain looming over it and through the picture window from less than twenty miles away.

And if that weren't enough, another Lonely Mountain in the opposite direction about fifty miles.

There we dined on fresh baked salmon and last-year's-apple pie (the apples, not the pie), and I perused under the author's watchful eye the two volumes (v. 1, v. 2, British editions only so far) of The History of The Hobbit by John Rateliff, which does for The Hobbit what the twelve volumes of Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle-earth did for The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

The self-contained essays on various specific topics were the most interesting part, leading to conversations like this one:

"John?"

"Yes?"

"You wrote twelve pages on Radagast."

"Yes, I did."

"I would not have thought this possible."

"Well, it seemed like the thing to do."