Dear Diary,
Don't get jealous, I started my journal today.
It is a place I can record songs and tunes, poems and suchlike. You will always be the one I tell my feelings.
I visited Gammer Took today, she is a strange Hobbit. Like all young Hobbits I thought she had gone a bit daft in the head, what with her sitting out in her garden on her best chair all day.
I told her about meeting Carlyon and the task I had taken on. Do you know she just nodded and smiled when I finished!
After quite a long silence she told me she had been given a task as a young lass, she was to meet folk and listen to them, to guide them in life choices.
She has a gift of knowing what talents and traits folk have and helps those that need it. She used to travel to see folk and "'elp 'em see what they already know" but as she got older her legs couldn't carry her as far. So now, every dawn she sets up her best chair in her garden and waits. "They'll always give me somethin fer me time" she told me.
We talked about so many things, she told me about my Mum's side of the family. It wasn't talked about at home when Mum was here, and even less with her gone.
I can't recall everything that was said, but I will try my best so's I don't forget it all.
Everyone called Mum 'Cam' I didn't know it was a nickname, Gammer told me her birth name was Chamomile Whittlings and she was from a travelling-Hobbit family.
I've seen the travellers down at Waymeet and their brightly painted Burrow-vans. I have always envied their freedom. Mum's family had travelled all over The Shire and beyond the bounds, but one summer they came to stay near Hobbiton for the festival.
This must have been before some of the local folk set up the permanent camp site at Waymeet.
"She was a sight to see. Pretty as a Spring mornin" Grammer said. "Lads from all over The Shire came to watch her dance.
They were so funny to watch, fallin over each other just to stammer at her." Dad was shy back then, and was scared to go near her.
So do you know what he did? He went to the van before dawn one morning and left a sack of taters and a note.
I always wondered what the slip of parchment was that Mum carried tucked in her pocket, she wouldn't go anywhere without it.
No-one knows what was on the note except Mum and Dad, but he must have been a good writer. They were always seen together after that.
When the festival ended Mum's family moved on, the road called them onward.
Mum stayed behind! Gammer looked after her and found her a job and bed at the Bird and Baby. It was a year later Mum and Dad were married.
This would explain why I feel restless and feel the need to travel. I'm half a travelling-Hobbit! My Mum used to call this feeling "Itchy feet" then point to my Dad and say "He's my cure, you'll have to find your own - each is different"
I saw that Lass again today, all dressed in her finery. I overheard her saying to the lad she was with they would be late for the dragon. I asked Gammer about dragons and told her about the Lass.
Gammer actually laughed, can you believe it? She can be such a sour face. Anyway, Gammer told me there is a weekly meeting of Hobbits at the Green Dragon at Bywater. They share songs and stories! I can almost feel my journal pulling me there. Maybe next week I shall go. If Gammer can keep an eye on Popsy for me.
Today is a learning day
