Happy New Year!

It's not a place mat, it's a Wentworth wooden jigsaw. I have about ten of them, and all are worth re-doing. I sold some of my oldies during the first lockdown, but I've bought more since. I also have a friend on a cat-charity stall who alerts me when she finds more.

This one was a Christmas present from my sisterTML. I was feeling much better, I actually wanted to get up and did not feel achey. So, got up and dressed, started the cat jigsaw while listening to Eddi Reader singing the songs of Robert Burn, and actually finished in a couple of hours because I was in the Zone and not getting distracted by my phone.

Then I wanted to do my other cat jigsaw by Lesley Anne Ivory (see extras) but could not be bothered to look for it. Remembered that I had another Wentworth from the cat-charity that I hadn't done yet, so decided to try it. This was a shaped butterfly jigsaw with pictures-within-pictures.  Not sure I liked it, but the challenge was good, and I watched Mary Poppins Returns at the same time. Then my sister and her youngest called, so we could have a video chat with our mother, who wasn't saying lots but seemed cheerful.

My sister K is 57.75 and I'm the same plus one year, and we both admitted to having had 'a quiet night in 'on Hogmanay, for the first time in decades! In her case, it was a desire not to drink alcohol and the problems of transport in a rural area that stopped her. In my case, I managed a glass of gluhwein but felt generally rough, and was in bed before the chimes of midnight. Maybe next year we'll form a virtual kitting circle...She had a new year's day swim in a west highland loch. I did no such thing. Made it to the dustbins, though. That's at least ten steps.

Finally, during a fabulous evening of programmes about Motown music in the UK, I found and completed the other Lesley Anne Ivory cat jigsaw (see extras). This is one of my favorites, and I found it much more difficult because I was multi tasking.

Note: I grew up with very bad eyesight and glasses that were broken a lot of the time. In the 70s/early 80s my large family had a small black and white tv. At some point I reloaded that if there were a lot of us in the sitting room, it was easier to sit on the sofa behind the tv, and rely on the soundtrack and my family's comments to understand what was going on. Retro-Gogglebox? Radio, anyone? Part of me still thinks that it's not necessary to see the picture to actually 'watch'TV. Part of me also has a distracting phone...I'm happy to report that, 4O-plus years on, I've had laser surgery, and we have a larger colour TV.

After all this excitement, I went to bed and started browsing Wentworth jigsaws in the post-Christmas sale...