pumpkinstrokemarrow

DT having a bit of a rampage about the appalling state of health care in this country, including a front page piece yesterday about some scandal in a home for the demented. All a bit rich coming from a paper of the right. The scandal is all very sad, but until we are collectively willing to put a lot more money into provision for the demented such things are going to happen. However much the DT huffs and puffs. Caring for the demented is hard and skilled work, but work which is often badly paid and often left to the immigrants (whom we are apt to knock in other contexts) because not enough of our own are up for it. Numbers of the demented are no doubt growing apace while public provision for same is no doubt being squeezed - but how many of us are making proper provision against this eventuality? What price shares in private providers of dementia care? The growth industry of the first quarter of the 21st century? One can only suppose that this is where the sympathies of the DT really lie.

Part of my own provision, which also provides variation from a diet of Trollope and his kind, is a resumption of jigsaw activity, something which I have done from time to time in the past, generally on holidays or other festal occasions, and something which is said to be good at keeping the brain cells ticking over and the dementia at bay. So today I cracked open the mint condition jigsaw of 'On the Water', a large format, 500 piece jigsaw of a picture painted by one Gale Pitt, made into a handsome jigsaw by Gibsons and procured from a High Street charity shop a few weeks ago. The artiste does not seem to rate a Wikipedia entry, but she looks as if she is very successful, with this very jigsaw getting lots of hits with Google. Probably makes a lot more out of jigsaws than many a painter of arty pictures makes out of pictures, leaving aside the showmen like Hirst. And probably does better in cash terms than Millais who, at his peak in the second half of the nineteenth century, was making the then enormous sum of £40,000 a year. A lot more than Trollope was making out of his books at around the same time.

Anyway, this particular picture is very good for jigsaw and I imagine that it was painted with that in mind, with paint being far superior to photo anyway. A busy picture with lots going on, but with bold designs and with colours used in such a way that if you have one bit of a boat (or whatever) it is not to hard to spot the other bits from colour mix alone. Only I have made it slightly harder for myself by not using a big enough table and having all the unused pieces in the box, rather than spread out and sorted. This because the completed jigsaw at 27 by 19 inches will occupy most of the table which is available.

For harder jigsaws, where one cannot usually locate any given piece by inspection but where I do have a suitably large table, I use a variety of sorting techniques. Sometimes subject matter - sky, brick wall, water, whatever - sometimes colour.  And then, assuming that we are talking about regular jigsaws with each piece (other than an edge piece) roughly a square with either a hole or a prong on each of the four sides, there is only a fairly small number of shapes and it is possible to sort by shape. Then, when at least two sides of a vacant position are filled, one has a much reduced number of candidates to test, and one also has them to hand. This technique being useful for large expanses of rather bland sea or sky. A bit tedious but you do get there in the end. Most jigsaws are regular in this sense.

Perhaps I will start having jigathons with FIL - although he would probably object to the expense of getting two copies of the same jigsaw.

PS: hitherto I have found it hard to do jigsaws by anything other than natural light. Can't see to match the colours otherwise. But just presently I have the use of a small halogen powered table lamp which serves just as well as sunlight. So if you do your jigsaws indoors, get one!