One of the greatest quests in Middlesex (not to be confused with Middle-earth) began with the Wizard Sevan the Wise and Kash the Hobbit knocking at Mrs L's door in Hanwell. When a wizard knocks on your door, you don't quite know what to expect, and Mrs L seemed rightfully confused at the sight of the quite otherworldly-looking pair. Sevan explained that they had come to perform a bit of garden wizardry, and Mrs L let them walk through her house into the back garden.

In the backyard, there were weeds to take out from beds and paving, leaves to sweep, and trees and other plants to trim. There was plenty to be done, but only a modest collection of tools to be found in the shed: a children-sized spade, broken loppers and a small fork without a handle. Surely, fantasy heroes could work with that. A more pressing subject, though, was the back gate.

Mrs L insisted there was only one way the garden waste should leave the garden: through the back gate. The problem was that the gate would only open a foot or so, blocked by bulging paving beneath it. On the other side, fly-tipped rubbish had piled up into a solid barrier, blocking the way as if the garden had quietly decided that no one shall pass. No one, that is, except a hobbit.

Who could better serve as the expedition’s “burglar” than Kash - perhaps the closest thing to a real hobbit you could find in Ealing. Kash squeezed through the gate (not an easy feat!) and found herself in a heavily littered green tunnel. Beneath her feet lay fly-tipped bundles of branches, above her, a canopy of overgrown ivy. Kash used her most unlikely but essential power - her short stature - to slip through where others couldn’t. She pushed past a cluster of buckets and pots and soon reached a fork in the alleyway. The left-hand path had been cleared of overgrowth, and through it she could already see the bars of an exit gate at the far end. The right-hand side, by contrast, looked like an impenetrable thicket of brambles. Kash had overheard Mrs L's neighbours mention nettles, foxholes, barbed wire, and all manner of nastiness beyond it - a route no one would reasonably attempt.

Kash tried the left-hand route first, Mrs L's key in hand, but the lock refused to yield. No match. So she turned back. What else could she do? Armed with broken loppers, she carved a narrow path through the brambles on the right-hand side exit, inch by inch, until she reached yet another gate. This time, the key turned. The lock was open. And just like that, the path to the street was revealed.

Meanwhile, back in the garden…

Sevan the Wise, alongside the kind neighbours, had been engaged in a different kind of quest: one of persuasion. With calm words and practical reasoning, they revealed to Mrs L a truth long overlooked. There was, in fact, a far simpler way for the green waste to disappear from the back garden: through the house.

And so, when Kash returned triumphant from her journey - having gone there and back again - the adventurers were granted passage through the house, to dispose of the trimmings into a green bin kindly lent by one of the neighbours. The neighbour also equipped them with a broom and a shovel, which made it possible to sweep the weeds that Sevan had ruthlessly obliterated from the paving with a hoe.

A heroic quest. A path revealed. And, ultimately… entirely unnecessary. Still, every great story needs its hobbit.