Three

Ooo, I've been sitting a bit funny and my leg's gone a bit achey. Ow.

In the spirit of my aching self, I feel incapable of writing a comprehensible blog today, so instead I think I will make a small collection of thoughts. Sorry.

1) Chris Moyles- I do not like him. A very brief note, but jesus christ, have you listened to Radio 1 in the mornings lately? I had the misfortune to do so, because I had grown so sick of the appalling fetid-brained sock-people that present breakfast tv and decided to try the radio. I should have known that Radio 1 was not for me; Radio 4 is my natural home, and I shall never leave it again. The Chris Moyles Breakfast radio show is essentially an hour (how long does it go on for? I've no clue. How could I possibly find out without wanting to end it all?) where Chris Moyles makes vague references to something funny he said down the pub last night, while a gang of sycophantic jibberers squeel themselves silly about how fucking funny he is. Underneath it all, a constant jingle plays, like we're all having a fucking jolly time, because Chris Moyles is so fucking funny. Christ.

2) I watched around half an episode of Supernatural last night. This is a series I've utterly failed to get into, mainly because it's shown in a fairly random fashion late night on ITV2 (I think) and may turn up on any night, and at any time. I've always been a little intrigued, mainly due to its huge following on fandomsecrets, from which I have learned all sorts of interesting facts about the Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean. Mainly, that if they had sex it would apparently be really, really hot.
So I finally saw some of it and was rather disappointed. To be fair, I'm coming rather late to the party, and my paltry plot knowledge gleaned from poorly constructed jpegs containing such wisdom as "I would hit that!" and "Ruby sucks!" was hardly likely to give me the best preparation. But still. What mainly happened was a number of devastatingly attractive people hung around looking devastatingly attractive, whilst giving the sort of moody glances that indicate rumpy pumpy might be on the cards at any moment. True, there was a woman there in a mental institution who could hear the voices of angels and demons, but even she was distractingly beautiful. Despite being loopy, she still apparently had time to nip out and get her hair dyed "Mystic Plum". Oh, someone had a nosebleed too, and someone tried to stab someone else. But that was largely it. And not once did those two brothers have sex. Disappointing.

3) Fantasy trilogies: I am in the middle of one at the moment. This is rare for me, because the sort of fantasy that comes in trilogies (and higher numbers) is normally the sort of fantasy I'm rubbish at finishing. No reflection on the books themselves; I still love sword and sorcery fantasy and all it is and all it stands for. When I was a kid I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings, but since then I think my attention span has shrunk, and proper po-faced fantasy has me running for something a bit more funky, with a little more humour in it; The Lies of Locke Lamora, for example, or The Book of Lost Things.
So the Trilogy I am currently slogging through? Robin Hobb's Soldier's Son sequence. And I am enjoying it; I'm just not sure I can tell you why. The set up is very similar to her previous series, the Assassin's Apprentice (which I loved) where a young male character grows up with an unwanted magical "gift", has all sorts of shit happen to him because of it, and generally has a fairly rotten time. The AA series had dragons and pirates going for it, and intrigue and castles, but Soldier's Son... well. It has the army. Uh. And spotty magical people. And stately balls (ahem). And the most interesting thing to happen so far happened in the first 100 pages, which is a little annoying when you've read around 800 pages so far.
But, it is a testament to Hobb's writing that she can take the pace this slow, have no dragons in it and still have me balancing the book on the washing machine while I try to turn the burger's over one handed. The woman writes characters you grow to love, and you learn a lot of patience that way.