This morning I left the Bodlein Library, where I'd gone to study because I can, and set off on a pilgrimage to see Tolkien's grave at Wolvercote Cemetery.
I won't post pictures because I didn't take any.
Not a one.
Why, you ask?
Might it have been for some poetic reason, like a fear of disrespecting the grave? Or because I was so overwrought with emotion that my mind escaped me and I simply forgot? Or because the line of fellow pilgrims was so long that I had to look fast and move on and let the line follow? Or because, beneath the pictures of Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom and scribbled fan letters, I couldn't see any grave to speak of?
Nope.
I didn't see it. I didn't see Wolvercote Cemetery. And I didn't see any place to stop and ask for directions (except for the Oxford Masonic Lodge, where I would've asked except that it didn't look like there was anybody inside). I did, however, see lots and lots of Wolvercote, which seems to be a charming (but expensive) place to live.
After more than an hour of walking to and fro (during which time, I've since discovered, I nearly unwittingly arrived at the cemetery), the walking-on-fire feeling emanating from the two blisters that compass the soles of my feet overcame my burning passion to stand on Tolkien's dust.
So I took the same bus back. Turns out the cemetery isn't really in Wolvercote afterall. I don't like that town.
And, for my pilgrimage, I have nothing to show. Not even, really, a funny story.
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