The Christmas Jigsaw.

It used to be a tradition for Herself to have a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas, a custom that faded when back problems made spending hours bent over one inadvisable. Various aspects have now subsided sufficiently for the practice to be resumed.

This particular puzzle comes as part of a murder mystery, a photographer has been murdered at a cat show he was covering and the picture shows the scene confronting the detective when he enters the darkroom containing the evidence which, together with some witness statements, is sufficient to obtain a conviction.

At a thousand pieces, with the only illumination being from the safelight, and no picture to work from, it's proving to be a difficult task. We are now coming to the end of day 5 and there's still some way to go; I suspect some naughty words learnt in the playground many years ago are due for an airing some time soon.

On a sad note, I've just watched the last of the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures, the topic this year was engineering. It was rather a disappointment with many of the demonstrations not working very well but the presentation carrying on as though they went perfectly. These days, engineers are seriously under-rated and I fear that this year's efforts will do nothing to help matters. In the past, Robert Louis Stevenson, coming from an engineering family, considered himself to be a failure as he could only aspire to be an author.

On that note, a Happy New Year everybody.