I did not get a chance to catch up with the news until late last night. After QI, I left it on for newsnight, and what I saw then made me feel suddenly cold. I saw president Obama announcing yet another school shooting, and, looking into his eyes, I thought I knew what he was thinking. He was asking himself ”is this why I came into politics? Is this the reason I went through all that pain? The electoral colleges, the TV debates? So I can stand here in front of millions and describe how some brainless little prick has taken his mother’s gun, gone into a primary school and killed twenty kids?” That is what I would be thinking had I been I standing where Obama was.

On my way back from the cinema last night, I thought about my dad. I remembered a night some twenty years ago, upon which he had began a new bedtime story. It had started ”In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” I remember in that moment I had imagined the type of small hole dad usually dug in the back garden for planting things, and wondering what a hobbit was and how it would fit. That night saw the birth of my love for Tolkien – a love which continues even now, and has been made even stronger by Peter Jackson’s films. Watching the first part off the Hobbit film adaption last night brought it all back to me – I felt like I had that night long ago with dad, for those very words are used in the film. In a way it had brought that night back to the present. And in that moment on my way home last night I resolved to skype my parents again quite soon.

This morning, however, I find myself thinking of those school children, and their parents who, because of some thug probably seeking some kind of place in history, are never going to get to read to their children again. I had a great childhood: one filled with stories of hobbits and dragons and rings – a world which Peter Jackson has renewed. These kids are now never going to experience such joy, and their parents are never going to have the pleasure my mum and dad had, of getting to see their kids discover such tales. And I, like Obama and everyone else, find that very sad indeed.