Toe in the Water

On Being a Hobbit

On Being a Hobbit

In real life, I am a miniaturist.

In my imagination, too, I realise. I have always seen other worlds in patterns on the wall or spots on a tarmac drive or rivulets in the gutters draining the rain from reality. My daydreams have been inhabited by the people who populate these tiny worlds.

This breaks through into the real world in the form of my various interests and pastimes. Most obviously, I once spent far too much of my free time in creating slot racing cars from scratch. These were accurate models of the real thing and, as time went on, they became more and more detailed as my obsession with perfection in miniature took over.

Today, at the age of seventy-four, I have realised another outlet for my fascination with the small. Over the past two or three years, my unconscious mind has directed me into the arena of tiny poems. I thought it was circumstance that arranged for me to become involved with the 24-Syllable Contest, and then Express It In Eight (lines). But now I see that it has been my propensity for little things that was at work all along.

I did not have to allow this gradual move into aggressively constrained poetry, after all. There was nothing that insisted I remain entangled with mini forms until the present. It’s enjoyment that has kept me churning out little poems, every day, for so long. Obsession has been in the driving seat and I am merely the vehicle.

What brought this revelation today was the decision to re-read all my offerings to Lilli 🧿 ☕ ’s Micro-Fiction Challenge (it didn’t take long - 100 words is definitely a microscopic short story). It struck me that I am going to miss this weekly challenge now that it is completed until Lilli restarts it in the future.

The plain fact is that I love this form of prose. It really is a challenge to create a situation and a story with a twist in its tail, all in the space of those 100 words. The possibility of creating a tiny gem is present within every start to a new micro-story. It’s my tendency to the miniature at work in me again and I’ve not been aware of it until today. Amazing that I’ve not noticed this before.

I’m not going to suggest that you have a go at this excursion into the realms of the tiny. That must be something you decide for yourself. We can’t all be hobbits, you know.


Word count: 420