1. How and when did you first find out about the TS?
It was Hibernia the Balrog who first introduced me to The Lord of the Rings and to the TS. We met at university, when I was studying electrical engineering and she was studying English (and was a member of Hobbitsoc as well as the TS). She eventually persuaded me to start reading LotR. I started one evening and later realised it was time to go to a maths lecture the next morning. After we were married she introduced me to people she knew on the TS, perhaps via Northfarthing Innmoot or perhaps by hosting a smial at our house in Ilford. Either way, I came to find more and closer friends via the TS than from anywhere else in my life.
2. What's your favourite drink?
On an immediate basis that can depend on the weather, what I have been doing, and what I may be eating. However, if it was a kind of "Desert island drinks" choice I would probably choose to keep red wine. Otherwise the immediate preference can be; good English beer with character, for example some of the Wychwood brews, a continental lager-style beer, or a wheat beer, served cool in summer (not the fluid often sold as lager in UK pubs), maybe a glass of something crisp and white like Pinot Grigio if we are eating salad in the summer, or very occasionally late at night a fine malt whisky, such as an Islay.
3. Have you always had cats? (I understand that owned is the wrong term :-D)
No, I was always a dog person and had a dog just large enough not to be small and yappy when I was at school. The Boss, whose home background included a tribe of cats, got me to agree soon after we got a house that if she happened across a cat that needed a good home and was otherwise unloved we would not turn it away. I agreed, and some months later, perhaps as long as a year, a colleague at her place of work told her of a stray cat she fed but could not keep in her flat. Hibernia took a wicker cat basket to London and brought the cat back in the basket on the train. When the basket was opened, the cat got out, saw someone sitting down, and got on their lap. That was Goldie, a deaf white cat who we took to Innmoot on at least one occasion. The three cats we have got through random chance have been white.
4. Do you have a favourite Tolkien character?
Well, I'd like to be Gandalf for much of the time, the wisdom and knowing more about how the universe works is a great attraction, though the bits of fighting and heroism might send me catatonic. It would be good to meet Galadriel because she might be willing and able to help me think more clearly and understand life, the universe and everything from a slightly broader perspective. I most admire Frodo for meeting difficult challenges from a standing start and doing it better than anyone had a right to expect.
5. Who is your favourite author, apart from Tolkien?
That would have to be Terry Pratchett, evidenced by the fact that his books are the only ones we always buy in hardcover before they are available as paperbacks. OTOH there are others who are close to the top of my list. In no particular order, Vernor Vinge, John Varley, Peter Hamilton, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Moon, Selina Rosen, Justina Robson, Robert Sawyer, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tom Holt, JK Rowling, and some whose names will occur to me later.
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