Puzzled

As part of my chilling out project I started doing a jigsaw today. Haven't done one since the kids were little, but have fond memories of my Mum's addiction to difficult puzzles - she always had a 5000-piecer set up on the spare table, and spent days right at the start of a new one sorting the pieces into piles. I never understood how she could be so patient, but now I'm doing the same with a much smaller puzzle, in an attempt to achieve that calm meditative state while exercising parts of my brain - memory and shape and colour matching.

I just remembered an early developmental check #2 son had as a toddler. As he was 9 weeks premature it was necessary to see if he was achieving the usual milestones. The lady at the clinic gave him a 10-piece jigsaw to do - he looked at it in amazement, turned all the pieces over and did the puzzle right away with the blank sides facing up. I'm not sure what she made of that, but it certainly shut her up; two years previously she'd seen #2 daughter for testing, and offered her a very simple picture book to look at and talk about. #2D looked at her in disgust and went and sat under the table instead. The woman asked whether we have any books at home, in a very patronising voice. "A few" I said sarcastically, thinking of the stuffed bookcases and piles of books in every room, not to mention the weekly trip to the kids' section of the local library, where they all chose 6 books each. The clinic lady had no kids of her own.

Africa was brown today.