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A few days back Lommy, Aganzir and their friend - let us call her Goldberry* for she was, much like other two, fair as the river’s daughter - came past my neck of the woods. I first met them at the train station and then, after leaving their luggage, we went on a prompt tour of the city. I’m not sure how many sights the girls actually saw, because most of the time we were walking, walking and talking about a dizzying amount of subjects, from Downs gossip to world affairs. Since Goldberry had developed a caffeine addiction after too many cool and refreshing ice-lattes in the Southern sun I then left them at a local coffee-shop – outside of which Lommy found time for a quick rant about Starbucks - for some personal time.

Later in the evening we took off to what I’d promised to be a “Shire-ish place”. The plan was to have a modest BBQ there, but unfortunately the actual planning was all too neglected from my part, so I showed up with some of the gear required but far from all. We had to make do though and after a walk, rather longer than I had though, we finally arrived at the site.

Shire-ish or no, the hazy evening sun was shimmering over the land as Aganzir and Goldberry to their delight discovered several horses running free. As they walked up to the shapely beasts grazing the tall grass I reached for my camera, but alas, the battery was dead (fortunately Lommy was a hand to make amends). I lit up the 3 Euro use-once grill we bought at the supermarket and started with some veggies and shrooms – Aganzir insisted that mushrooms were a must in Shire – but before even the veggies were done, and with all the rest of the food still uncooked, the crappy 3 Euro grill started to die down. “Blasted!”, I says, and at the brink of disaster it’s decided that we need to start a fire. We all scramble for dry twigs and any other flammables and at the last minute a small bon-fire is achieved. Some minutes later the heat is sufficient to cook the rest of our food, but now there’s an ominous grey tone to the over-cast sky, robbing us of a fair sunset. Just as we start enjoying the food the first cool drops of rain hit our faces, and by the time we finish the meal it’s pouring down, leaving us little choice but to scramble our stuff together and head back under the cover of trees.

All and all it had been a very enjoyable day though. The girls were, much as I suspected, very pleasant to be around, and I look forward to delving deeper into many of the various subjects we only too briefly came around to discuss.

*if there is a member called that, she's not the one I'm talking about