[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Indeed, it mostly concerns different interests. I am fortunate enough to have the required number of friends who love Tolkien like I do in order to have spent several great nights in pubs (well, one pub in particular) discussing obscure Tolkien debates into the small hours of the night (one such discussion on the greatness of Elrond was particularly heated!).

All too often though, I have been in situations where other people keep going on and on and on and on about things that I really don't care about (particularly during family gatherings where my mother and her sisters manage to talk about their extended family for hours on end). And, as Saraphim so rightly suggests, neither do I care for insipid 'romantic' tales, so I tend to drift into my Barrow-Downs persona quite a lot when I am surrounded by other people.