In praise of jigsaw puzzles

There is something wonderful about doing a jigsaw. You start out with a box and you have some idea that inside is eventually going to be a large version of the picture on the box, but sometimes bits are covered up by the title and sometimes there isn't a picture.

I usually start with the edge pieces and once the framework is complete putting the content inside it is the idea. There are usually prominent parts that are easier to put together and then other areas where you really have to examine the pieces closely because you're not really sure until you get down close whether they fit and if they are the right ones.

Then eventually you get left with just the really tough part where everything actually seems the same (like the sky) and you just creep on putting in piece after piece in a monotonous effort that stretches sanity. At this point I sometimes lay the pieces out systematically and try every piece in turn every way round in each space until the right one is found. The smart way of course is to look for the notches and grooves and match the notches to the grooves, there is always a perfect match.

As you near completion and have maybe a hundred pieces on the table it is easy to think that along the way some have gone missing.

If you have been careful though, kept the puzzle together and followed through then you get to the last part where there are maybe thirty pieces left, they all go in so easily and then the fight over who puts in the last piece!

It's so amazing when it goes in and everything is perfect.

Only then can you look at the jigsaw and see the whole picture, and bits that seemed unfathomably strange make up the most beautiful bits of the picture.

I think that's a bit like life. And maybe the Church?

Footnote:

Once all the pieces are in and you've stared at the perfect, completed picture for a wee while, there is that humbling moment that you realise you can no longer justify hogging the dining room table any more and you crumple it all up and replace it in the box! I think that's a shame so I have started photographing my jigsaws so I can look back on them because in reality you're never going to do that same 3000 piece puzzle again, now are you?

Pass them on to someone else, donate them to your library or a worthy cause! A completed jigsaw is like a sign of the end times.

Anyway there go a couple of my memories...

He speaks

How could I ever think that God doesn't speak?
I've listened to his voice in songs, in the sea, in the scenery I pass through in the car.

I passed by a grey stone wall tonight. Dead and lifeless.

Then further along green plants, growing between the stones had taken over the surface of the rock, and gave life to what was dead.

Rocky, stony beds made alive by living waters

Even the street names talk of Him ... Riverside Way (in a part of town that's nowhere near the river!)

Strange, that.

God speaks.

Listen.

Red Squirrels and Snow and things

Well here we were back in Scotland... a delightful trip and a beautiful setting for a week where we had no contact (well very little - including a mobile phone call from Simon at the top of Cairn Gorm) from the outside world ... no TV, no phone signal at the cottage, no computer or internet ... back to nature.

Here are a few well chosen pictures of the week's 'events'!

Toeses and Noses

Anne thinks she may have broken a toe. (Oh no, she didn't do it on the City Tour bus - that was last week! Actually it's a good job she didn't break it last week, we did an awful lot of walking round Glasgow and she has been looking forward to that trip.) Fell down a hole apparently, we went up to A and E but the whole of Blackpool were there and the walk in centre (perhaps it should be renamed the 'hobble in centre' as everyone else seemed to be doing the same tonight) seemed a better option.

* I'm sorry but if you are going to become a regular reader of this blog you'd better get used to my long sentences and sub clauses and split infinitives. (If I ever get my novel completed it will definitely be full of this style of thing and it will be easier for you to read if you get into the hang of this now)

Well apparently they wouldn't have done anything for the toe at A&E anyway so we saved ourselves the long wait, just plenty of rest and elevation - they don't even strap it up now because it's better to splay the toes! (I've probably got that wrong, but anyway I'm not a medical expert) so here we are back at home. I seem to remember a friend at school playing football and breaking his nose, and they said much the same to him apparently (well I think it had already been splayed but that's not really what I meant.)

I suppose amazingly these injuries will just heal themselves. Never be quite the same again, noses just don't go back exactly after being broken, and probably toes don't either. There are a few well known football managers with distinctive faces to prove it. But we carry on. Interesting, though, isn't it, the wonder of the power of healing???

Well, I'd better go and make another coffee!

3 Days in Edinburgh - day 1: Dalkeith Park

Dalkeith woodland

Highland cows

Adventure playground

Snowdrops

Tramway repairs in Blackpool

The intention was to go for a walk and see the beached cargo ship off the sands at Norbreck, and the camera had to come as well as it doesn't get as much exercise nowadays since its accident.

So when we reached the promenade the realisation dawned that I still hadn't taken any pictures of the tramtrack without any tracks or trams!

Progress has obviously been slow due to the weather which also accounted for the unexpected tourist attraction off Norbreck - the stranded ferry!

The uprights carrying the cables appeared incongruously with their concrete bases hovering above the earth.

Strange to see the little JCB parked where the trams would usually be racing past, and the black drainage pipes half submerged in mud!

Rather pointless sign at this point, mainly because nothing is running very fast at the moment!

Ewoks and Onesimus

Why does everything good always have to be serious too?

This morning listening to the radio on my way to work I heard someone complaining about the Ewoks in The Return of the Jedi. Getting in the way of our enjoyment of the grand climax to the first trilogy of Star Wars films! And Jar Jar Binks doing the same thing for the second trilogy (except that I remember him having his main role in the first film, so it hardly ruined the climax!)

Well I liked the Ewoks. What’s wrong with having little comic characters in an epic film as a bit of light relief? These weird but cuddly creatures were only following in the same tradition as those mysterious people in the first film who wobbled across the sand in their cloaks and hoods and you only ever saw their eyes.

If God had meant everything to be serious he wouldn’t have given us comedy.

There is laughter and comedy throughout history and throughout the Bible. What’s more comic than Balaam’s surprise when his ass has a go at him for being so stupid that he couldn’t see the angel of death blocking his road? Or the irony in Paul returning the formerly useless slave, Onesimus to his Christian master, in the letter to Philemon, because in turning and giving his life to God, his name is finally accurate.

It’s good to know that God has a sense of humour, because he invented it. So when sometimes when disaster strikes or we feel neglected or at the end of our tether it seems God is laughing at us, be reassured. He cries with us in these times.

And when things go amazingly well, God shares our joy. God laughs with us, but never at us. Because he loves us.