The Frumplingtons

It should have been just an ordinary day at the garden centre, but instead it turned into a disaster:

• A man had to cling on to the handle of his electric mower as it ran out of control, destroying plants and terrifying customers.
• A monkey threw coconuts at passers-by in the palm tree display area.
• And a carnivorous plant gobbled up an elderly woman’s pet dog.

Fortunately, none of these things happened to us. They were all parts of “The Garden Centre”, a jigsaw puzzle that we managed to complete in record time: only three days.

The original picture was created by Lee Fearnley, who also paints humorous vintage sporting pictures. (Note: I am assuming the Lee Fearnley that the link leads to, and the jigsaw puzzle artist, are one and the same. Surely there can’t be two Lee Fearnleys, can there? But if you know better — or, indeed, if you actually are Lee Fearnley — leave us a comment and we’ll correct any errors we’ve made.)

Shana seems to think I need more fibre in my diet. She could be right. And, technically, I suppose wool is a kind of fibre. And when Shana first presented me with this cake, I must admit I was tempted to take a bite out of it. Until I realised it was actually knitted!

This year Shana has taken up the needles again, and it’s fascinating to see how versatile she can be, especially as she has hardly even looked at a ball of wool for the past year. Here’s one of the first things she made since resuming her adventures in knitting. I was overawed by the complexity of this little racing car, the number of different colours involved, and the small size of some of the parts. I joked that it reminded me of Penelope Pitstop from the cartoon classic, “Wacky Races”. But seriously, I really like what Shana has made recently. She’s gonna have to do that cake again, though: next time, I want jam and cream filling — and plenty of it.

We were doing some online shopping at Wilko’s the other day. Just a few bits and pieces, that’s all.

And suddenly, Shana noticed the amount on the bill. If we were superstitious we could have added a packet of Rolos to the order, you know, just to bring it up to a round number. But hey, what the hell! (Oops, me and my big mouth.)

We finished another jigsaw puzzle today: ‘The Greyhound Hotel’ by Malcolm Root. Lots of Malcolm Root’s pictures have been turned into puzzles, and one of his main subjects is trains and buses. However, it was neither the bus nor the car that caused us problems when doing this puzzle: the real trouble we had was with the sky.

In the unlikely event that Malcolm Root is reading this, I’d just like to say one thing: please please please can you make the horizons a bit higher in your pictures? In fact, the less sky, the better. Things like roof tiles, you see, have a particular orientation: it’s easy to tell if they’re the wrong way round. But clouds can go either way round and any way up. You just don’t know where you are with them.

At least the writing on the hotel wall and on the bus was a bit easier, and it was nice to watch the picture take shape as we neared completion. The old ruin in the background is Corfe Castle. The Royal Blue Coach Service is (was?) a real bus company (no spitting at the back, please). And the old dear in the big hat who you can see sitting half way along the bus, is, we think, a fare dodger. You can tell from her facial expression: she’d rather stare out of the window than catch the conductor’s eye. We could enlarge that part of the puzzle and do a mock-up ‘WANTED’ poster, but what’s the point? The statute of limitations on fare dodging is only about five minutes anyway. It would all be too much bother.

We finished another jigsaw puzzle just after lunchtime. And barely five minutes after it was completed, Shana was scouring a well known Internet auction site for even more puzzles. We saw several that were advertised as 999-piece puzzles. In each case, these turned out to be puzzles that had started with 1000 pieces but lost a piece somewhere along the line. At least the sellers are being honest about it, we thought. Then it hit me: this could be the start of a whole new social networking/ jigsaw puzzlers reunited kind of thing. Here’s how it would work:

1. The first seller buys a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, completes it, removes one piece and then advertises it on you-know-where as a 999-piece puzzle.
2. Whoever buys the newly reduced puzzle must remove another piece after they have completed it. They must then resell the puzzle, advertising it as a 998-piece puzzle.
3. This process continues until the puzzle is down to just one piece. Technically, one piece wouldn’t be so much a puzzle as a complete mystery, although there should still be a way to tell what the picture of the finished puzzle is meant to be: look at the box lid, you oaf!
4. Now that the original 1000-piece puzzle has been whittled down to its last piece, all the owners of the puzzle (i.e., at least a thousand people) must then have a grand reunion at which they all bring the piece of the puzzle that they removed when they owned it. The puzzle piece is, in effect, their ticket of entry to the meeting.
5. Ideally, the grand puzzlers’ meeting should be held at the location of the puzzle picture. So, if the puzzle is a picture of Corfe Castle (that’s the one we’ve just done), then that’s where everyone should meet up. Our next puzzle is going to be a lunar landscape, so maybe we’d better book a place on the space shuttle now; unless, that is, we’re just going to a Hollywood film set, in which case I think I’ll give it a miss if it’s all the same to you.
6. After the buffet (all good reunions have a buffet, with cheese on sticks and loads of sausage rolls etc) the puzzlers all get together to see their puzzle completed for one last time, before breaking it all up again and putting it back in the box and taking it down the nearest charity shop pronto.

Fantastic idea, isn’t it? Bet those wallies over at Facethingy wish they’d thought of it first!