Lestheprof's Blog

In my last post, I mentioned completing a jigsaw: it was of Velasquez’s Las Meninas, that my wife had bought when we visited the Prado in Madrid a few years ago. She had given it to her sister, but her sister and husband had never managed to complete it. So when they heard I’d broken a finger, and couldn’t play music or ride my bicycle, they sent it to us.

This was a difficult jigsaw, with 1000 pieces: so many parts of it are similar in colour, and often a piece shows just a little image, and it is very hard to tell where it might go. So we started it, found the corners and edge pieces, and assembled the frame, Then we went for parts that we were reasonably sure we could identify, and then tried the bits between. This took a long time – and we went away for a short holiday when we were near the end (and I was near the end of my tether – quite happy to give up).

But returning to it after a week away, I finished it quite easily. We are fortunate that we had space in the conservatory, where there’s a lot of light: it would have been even harder by artificial light. Still it’s done.

I found that getting it right in the end meant looking for anything that seemed not quite right, and then swapping pieces (or even sets of pieces) so that it did look right. It seemed to me to have something in common with debugging a computer program, looking for bugs, and fixing them, but within a very constrained environment.

I enjoyed it a lot: and I really learned to appreciate Velasquez’s art at the same time. Still, perhaps the next jigsaw will have slightly fewer pieces!

Way back in January in what seems to have been a different world we booked a week’s holiday in Alnmouth, Northumberland.

It took us a little while to adjust, having been under lockdown – or near lockdown – for about three months. But we managed. We spent as much time as possible on the beach, where the 2 metre social distancing was very straightforward. Lussa (the dog) loved the beach, where there were lots of other dogs as well as a few people. The pubs were not really open – just the beer gardens and then only in good weather and not for very long. But our son and his fiancé came to see jus staying in their own camping van a few miles down the coast, and bicycling to our little apartment.

The highlight was actually eating a meal out! In Craster at the Jolly Fisherman which specialises in crab, in their garden where it was almost too hot. Not something we were used to at all. Our cottage was small but had a nice little courtyard which was both dog-secure and entirely out of the wind.

Now we’re back: here in Scotland outdoor bars are open, and shops too, though one must wear a mask in shops (not in bars: that would make drinking a little difficult). We’ve managed a coffee across the road at the Riverside, and I finished a very tricky jigsaw we started not long after I broke my finger.

One day we’ll go further field, but for now we’ll simply stay here. Back to practising music, playing with Jamulus, learning Ivrit and generally living.