Hobbits, dwarfs and miners …

摘要

During the holidays, I took my nephew, age 6, to see the final Hobbit movie, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. After leaving Middle Earth and returning to the realm of the 21st century, my nephew asked auntie "Xena" what she did when she went to work (i.e. when she was not on duty as Robin's Little John, Pan's Captain Hook or a Jedi Knight's Vader). I replied that I was a miner. This drew the same squint-eyed, blank look of confusion from my nephew that I have sometimes seen when answering the same question during cocktail parties, high-school reunions and introductions to family friends. Once again, I struggled to gear my description of our diverse and exciting industry for the layman's ear. "Well Ivan, miners are sort of like Gimli the Dwarf," I explained. "They work underground, inside mountains, to uncover metals like iron and silver - metals the Elves needed to forge daggers like Sting, gold like Sauron needed to make the one ring."