In the downstairs toilet of our house, which is just a small room off the hallway tucked underneath the stairs, hangs a poster. It’s mounted in a simple clip-frame. Every time I go into that space I look at that poster. Every time I see that poster I smile inwardly and rapidly tell myself the story of when I first saw it, how I first obtained it, how I lost it and how I got it back again. Ultimately, it’s a story of a thoughtful act of kindness, a simple act of love, a gift-giving from someone who deeply cares about me. It also serves as a bridge to my past and to many moments of happiness some years before the gift-giver even came into my life. There’s more: the theme of the poster is one of adventure and bravery, fear and danger and leaping (plunging might be better) into the unknown. Those words – adventurous, brave – are not really me. Plunging into the unknown is NOT what I do. Fear stalks me constantly. So the poster is a reminder that it is okay to be brave, to be adventurous, to take risks and to plunge into the unknown regardless of your fears and without clear sight of the dangers.

The poster at the heart of this story advertised an exhibition of drawings that the author J.R.R. Tolkien made to accompany his book ‘The Hobbit’. The exhibition took place at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, between 24th February and 23rd May 1987 and was a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book in 1937. It is a beautiful poster, mostly because apart from a title and the vital information about the exhibition in white letters on a black background at the top and bottom, it is almost entirely made up of one of Tolkien’s best works of art. The picture is titled ‘Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves’ and captures the moment in the story when having strayed into the territory of the Wood-Elves and been imprisoned in their dungeons, the hobbit Bilbo manages to obtain a set of keys, free his band of dwarf companions and escape by floating them all off down the river in empty wine barrels. The picture shows the river after it has leveled out through rapids and waterfalls, meandering onward towards a small settlement through woods that come right down to the water’s edge, all gnarly roots and hummocky promontories. In the distance there are buildings – the huts of the Raft-Elves – alongside a small beach-like area on a broad right-sweeping bend in the river. In the mid-ground, in the centre of the channel, are a number of barrels floating smoothly down towards the beach and bringing up the rear is one barrel with the small figure of Bilbo clinging tightly to the top of it as it floats along, since having sealed the last dwarf-laden barrel there was no-one left to seal in Bilbo… The lighting of the picture is beautiful, rays of sunlight stretching down through the canopy of trees, illuminating the middle distance, drawing the eye ever onward. The colours are soft greens, soft blues, greys and browns. It is a delicious palette that perfectly captures the deep woods, the swirling waters and the hope that lies ahead. The poster was designed by Trilokesh Mukerjee and whilst it is the picture that is the real thing of beauty, credit must be given for a design that blends the outer information and the inner artwork to such wonderful effect. Trilokesh Mukerjee will probably never know just how much pleasure his piece of design work has given me over the last 34 years.

As you will gather, I love this poster. I loved it from the moment I first saw it pinned to a noticeboard in the long corridor of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, that I wandered down several times each day to get from my room in college to the dining hall and food. I loved it so much that one day, on my way back from eating, I stopped at the poster, pulled out the drawing pins that held it fast to the wall and grabbed it. From that moment, that poster was mine. My precious indeed! I could place it on my own wall and gaze at it whenever I wanted to, as much as I wanted to.

Looking back, it is hugely ironic that whilst I gained possession of the poster, I did not set foot in the exhibition. It was open for 8 hours every weekday and 3.5 hours every Saturday during the entire period of the exhibition. It was perhaps a 15 minute walk from my room in a location that I frequently passed. There was no admission fee. Yet still I did not go to see the actual work of art itself. At that time in my life, going to an art exhibition just wasn’t really the kind of thing I did. Tragic really.

I had, of course, read The Hobbit – just once at that time and then perhaps 10 years previously. I remember the circumstances fairly well. I was off school with a cold – the sort of 3 day snuffler that was bad enough to lay a child low but not bad enough to prevent all kinds of activity. So I could read. Over those few days I took the small hardback copy of The Hobbit down from our family bookshelves – I remember there was no dust jacket, just the soft, almost olive green board covers – and I followed Bilbo and his companions as they made their way from The Shire to The Lonely Mountain, defeated the dragon Smaug and gathered up the golden treasure hoard. Along the way of course, Bilbo gains The Ring, that bringer of so much trouble and strife, that metaphor for the weight that we all carry with us through life. But that is another tale. The one abiding memory that I have from my first reading of The Hobbit was towards the end of the story when one of Bilbo’s dwarf companions (I think I was the effervescent Killi) dies of wounds received in a fight. I think perhaps he was protecting Bilbo at the time. I remember how I cried; oh how I cried.

1987 was the year that I finished my time at Oxford and so early that summer the poster was rolled up and carried away with me. Bilbo had come to the huts of the Raft-Elves, now he was coming with me. And he stayed with me for some years, probably stuck to a wall on display at times, perhaps not at others. He was still with me some years later – certainly four or five years later – because after I had met my wife Karen we must have had the poster on display in one or more of our houses. And during that time I must have spoken fondly of the poster, so strongly that my words burned an impression in her memory. Dragon fire words!

The problem with posters of course is that they are not made to last. My poster had a job to do for perhaps a few months at most. So as the years passed and the poster was moved here and moved there, pinned, unpinned, rolled, unrolled, blu-tacked, un-blu-tacked its edges died a slow death, its corners fractured, its heart creased. At some point, probably at one of our early house moves, the decision must have been made that my precious poster should end its journey; and so it was lost and essentially forgotten about, by me at least.

We come forward many years – around 30 years from when I first saw the poster on the noticeboard in Oxford and perhaps 20 from when it slipped away from me. My elder daughter was at university in Reading and with my younger daughter in tow I took myself off to Oxford to watch Plymouth Argyle play Oxford United down towards the south-eastern fringe of the city. My wife came along too to share a little time with our elder daughter who had popped up on the train for the afternoon. I can’t remember the score of the match – it might have been 0-0 for there has certainly been one goalless draw between those two teams at that location that I have seen – the most mind-numbingly dull 0-0 draw that you could possibly imagine, bereft of goals, bereft of excitement, bereft of anything remotely resembling entertainment.

We drove home to Plymouth immediately after the game. I was probably tired and almost certainly not in a good mood; travelling halfway across the country for that sort of game is not the best way to spend a Saturday. I am sure that doom and gloom would have been the order of things, for me at least. And then:

“Guess what I’ve got you?”

There it was. My poster. Well, not exactly my poster but a flat, undamaged, shiny copy of the exact same poster; not a reproduction; not a different poster of the same picture… the same poster – ‘designed by Trilokesh Mukerjee’. Perfection.

It turned out that wife and daughter had been browsing in Blackwell’s – the famous Oxford bookshop – and there, nestled hidden in a rack was the ‘Drawings for “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien’ poster; just one copy, presumably sitting there for 30 or so years, costing just a few pounds. Waiting for its moment.

That poster, my second copy, did not get pinned, rolled or blu-tacked. It got loved. As soon as possible it went straight into a frame and onto the wall, the wall where it has remained ever since and where I see it several times every day. It helps to remind me of happy times in Oxford, friends, places, events. It makes me laugh that I didn’t even make it to the exhibition. It causes me to recount story in my mind. And it reminds me how things that are lost can be found. Every day it reminds me that someone listens, someone watches, someone remembers and someone loves.

A couple of years later, I noticed that there was an exhibition of artwork and artefacts of Tolkien in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was the only such public exhibition of these items for many years and it included the small number of paintings that Tolkien painted for The Hobbit. Of course we went. The pictures, the maps, the draft chapters were all wonderful. The picture was wonderful – but my poster is better.

Bilbo and the dwarves escape from the dungeons of the Wood-Elves and down the river in the only way that is possible. It is an uncomfortable mode of transport; it is an uncertain path to take – being caught whilst loading the barrels, drowning, suffocating, being dashed against rocks are all possible outcomes – but they take it nonetheless. Quite literally, they throw themselves into life and life carries them forward. That is a lesson that I need to be reminded of every single day. The road goes ever on but it requires bravery to keep moving forwards.

(c) Tim O’Hare, January 2024 (originally written in 2021)