Time travel

Wow, it's been two months since I last logged on. It feels like I should say that it's felt as though the time has flown by, which it has. But looking back, it's impossible to see how. In the time between December to February, I've had a job, lost a job (at GAME), had another job for a week (running a French-style patisserie and cafe with my girlfriend for a week - we had to learn how to keep the place going in the space of a day, which proved for an interesting week indeed) and now I have another job, which is really an old job in a new place (working for Tesco at their new store in Bourne, opening on the 21st February). Again, I'm amazed I've managed to find so much work so quickly after being without it, and again, I'm worried that I even have to express such a sentiment given the fact that I should be capable of doing all kinds of work, yet convincing employers for anything even vaguely demanding is about as likely as England winning the Eurovision Song Contest and anyone even caring if they did. 

There's been a lot of other stuff to pad out the work out, too - trips to London, burying pets (my girlfriend's Dutch Rabbit, Zippy, passed away to much sadness from all involved), excess video game abuse and lots of toiling with horses in the freezing weather at my girlfriend's yard.

All in all, it's been an alright few months, but the terrible weather and dim future job prospects set my rather absent-mind wandering. My daydreams are almost always themed around my travels from last year with Pippa, which were probably the most character-forming and balls-to-the-wall amazing experiences I will probably ever have - which I say with absolute 100% certainty. As a result, I feel it necessary to make my next few posts piece-by-piece descriptions and analysis of places I visited and what I remember most fondly about them. I do have a journal stowed away back at my home in Stafford which would help refresh my memory, but I'll post my musings first and then maybe type selected nuggets of my journal word-for-word for all to witness. I'm surprised I haven't done this already, really, as the number one intention behind this blog was an outlet for my travel experiences. So keep your eyes peeled for those in the coming weeks.


To finish off, just a quick comment on a book I'm reading. I'm still slowly chugging through Raymond E. Feist's fantasy novel 'Magician', book one of the Riftwar Saga. Despite the fact that this book is vastly shorter than George R.R. Martin's 'A Storm of Swords' it's taking me about seven times longer to read this damn book - I started it in October and still...can't...finish it! It's quite popular amongst fantasy fiction readers, which surprised me as I found the first third of the book nigh on impossible to read. 

To begin with it reads like a terrible Lord of the Rings fan fiction piece - elves, dwarves and trolls are just thrown in and you're wondering why they're really necessary. The writing was so simple and crude, never really reaching the giddy heights of Feist's contemporaries. The plotting in the first part of the book lacked any kind of tension as the main characters spend about 250 pages just travelling from one locale to the next, not really having the time to develop their characters and impress themselves on the reader. For instance, the main characters, Pug and Tomas, don't really develop distinct characteristics until the second 'book' of the novel, when Feist executes his rather neat concept of two separate worlds warring across a rift of time and space rather well, and draws his characters right into the middle of it. I'm about 200 pages from finishing it and I would now recommend it if you have the strength to persevere through one of the weakest introductions I've ever known - you might just be there for a while.