Merton College

I have been putting off writing this post because I couldn't decide which picture of the stunningly picturesque college I should start with.

I finally decided to go with this—a small stone table in the Fellows Garden, where J.R.R. Tolkien used to sit and write. He may have written some or all of The Lord of the Rings here, or maybe he just graded student essays and scribbled notes to his relatives. It may be my favorite thing at Merton so far, and that's already a very long list.

If you sit at the table, this is your view, looking over the gardens and one wall of the Fellows Quad.

I'd like to think that if I sat there long enough I might be inspired to write something brilliant of my own—assuming of course that I could ever get accustomed enough to how beautiful it is here to make myself look away.