middle earth christmas: jabberworks

This Christmas, Stuart and I made the voyage to Middle Earth, which is quite a long way away. Here's my drawing of Stuart asleep on the train.

Ah, and another lady asleep on the train. I couldn't tell if she was trying to stay warm or avoid me drawing her.

We were met at the station by some fine young hobbits (one of them suspiciously tall), who whisked us off first to Ashburton's finest comics shop, Gnash Comics, where we bought that week's issue of The Phoenix Comic, a Yoko Tsuno comic, and one of James Turner's Mameshiba books.

And then we were out on the moor! Dartmoor, to be precise. Here's the obligatory Christmas photo to send to my parents:

Photo by Philip Reeve

But we didn't spend the whole four days running across the plains and hopping across tors, we had a very cosy Christmas at Reeve End, the finest hobbit hole anyone could imagine, even if the doors aren't all round-shaped. Here's a drawing of our fab hosts Sarah, Sam and Philip Reeve and Philip's visiting parents.

Despite the crisp weather, Sarah R and Stuart nipped out onto the lake to do some boating while the rest of us prowled around the banks, remarking on the high waterline from the recent heavy rains.

Then I amused myself by playing with my newfound mosstache.

Lovely stuff grows everywhere, I wish I had time to sit and draw every bit of it.

Oh, and I found a toad! I love toads.

Hee hee, this one's showing off its bottom.

As always, it was great seeing our fab friend Philip who, if you've been reading my blog, you'll know is working on four books with me for Oxford University Press, the first (Oliver and the Seawigs) due out next autumn. He's also written some very Middle-Earthish books, Goblins and Goblins vs Dwarves, which are brilliant reading, find out more about them here. I'll claim they're much better than the recent Hobbit film, if Tolkien fans don't bludgeon me for saying that.

Photo by Sarah Reeve

It was funny, Stuart and I went to see The Hobbit right after we'd come back from this huge, dramatic landscape, and while the New Zealand landscapes were amazing, it was a slight let-down from actually being IN the landscape, instead of sitting next to someone in the cinema who was eating a smelly hotdog. Here are Sarah, Sam and Philip on Merrivale, which I can see from this website to which I've just linked that it's an important place of legend and ritual.

That would explain this stick with the colourful little bags on it which we stumbled across near the standing stone avenue. Philip called it 'that hippie nonsense', then took an Instagram photo of it. Oh, and the poodle's named Frodo.