Hobbits

We have a window in the kitchen, or is it a hatch?  The glass in the door is rather like the old lucozade bottles, the yellow glass has a wrinkled film effect.  A window would ideally have a view, but it doesn't.  It’s too low for a hatch and in the wrong place.  What’s more, it doesn’t lead to anywhere you might want to post your food, unless it was tofu or tripe, of course, in which case you might be glad to post it anywhere at all.  I wonder how much tofu and tripe the Royal Mail finds each week.

But enough of tofu and tripe and back to our hatch, which leads to the sitting room, behind the fireplace.  Ian calls it the hobbit hole.  The girls disappear through it and pop out behind the log baskets. 

 

Oriana asks if the fire’s alight, but Ruth just clambers through, or tucks herself in behind the fire.  It’s probably the warmest seat in the house.

But what was the point of it?

The log burner is centred centrally in the fireplace, but clearly in the days of the open fire the fireplace was actually over to the side, behind where the other log basket is now placed.  It all looks purpose-built, yet off centre.  The flue for the fireplace runs horizontally from the log burner before heading up the chimney.  And it still doesn't explain the hobbit hole.

We will probably never know why the house got a hobbit hole, but we think every home should have one.