Puzzled and Puzzling

Puzzling

Things I’ve picked up from doing puzzles:

 The tradition of doing the edge pieces first still holds good. You need a framework.

When you least expect it a piece fits into a space that you never thought it would.

Close observation is required to note the tiny wee bit of black or the marginally different shade of pink.

It’s really satisfying when you have done a block of interlocking pieces in isolation and you realise it all joins up with a whole section of puzzle.

You know when it’s the right piece as it just clicks into place and feels right.

The satisfaction is in the doing, not in the completed puzzle.

The fear of a piece missing is ongoing until the final few bits.

You know its pointless but its satisfying anyway.

There’s no point in keeping the finished product and it’s fun to mess it up and put it away. again.

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Two resources I think are quite useful in the lock down.

Firstly from the elephant journal- stop romanticising the lockdown- it’s a mental health crisis in the making and secondly, as always my favourite philosopher, Alain de Botton on how to get through this crisis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeEXki3IVAc

Apart from puzzling I am doing a range of lightweight activities like listening on Borrow Box (a library audio link to Auckland libraries). I’m listening to marginally better written books than Mills and Boon. Not that I’m knocking Mills and Boon. I genuinely admire people who write these. I’m only interested right now in happy endings.

I’ve knitted for my nephew’s son, and soon I will start a beanie for a friend’s grand daughter.

I’m watching Girlfriends, by recommendation and it has two of my favourite actors, Miranda Richardson (Queenie from Blackadder), not least because when I was teaching I would borrow her words, “Either you shut up or I chop your head off.” Secondly, Zoe Wanamaker whom I have always loved in anything she was in.

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I like this show because the women look like us, they have wrinkles, they do messy crying, shit happens and they keep the world spinning for a whole raft of family and friends on a glass of gin. And there are, so far only men being murdered and no rapes as yet.

I didn’t realise quite how many episodes there are though….I think there are 22 in Season 1 alone.

So in this lockdown, I make no apologies for staying awake until 3 am, getting up at 11:30 and eating quite a lot and wearing the same clothes quite often. Fuck the routine, the keeping the same hours. Why? What for? Nothing is the same, why pretend? I know I’m lucky in my circumstances but I’m not Pollyanna either, my hair is way too short, albeit getting longer by the day. Who knows what the future holds. Stay in bed if you want and eat chocolate. I spend quite a lot of time looking at property in France, cottages by the sea, country retreats and knitting wool sites. There’s my two cents worth, do what you like.

Who could resist? https://www.french-property.com/sale-property/1624-63

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Hope your lockdown is okay. FG