Jigsaw

Jigsaw

I am very fortunate to have interesting friends. One is attempting to cross the border of Jordan into Syria for her summer holidays. She’ll come back even more knowledgeable about Middle East politics which will make our next conversation more challenging than the last one. Another has just returned from Hollywood where I like to think his life is one long episode of Californication and another lives in Brisbane, which isn’t at all interesting but they are having cyclonic weather conditions with fascinating daily updates.
Which makes my last four weeks at the caravan look exceptionally dull.
“So what have you been up to?” inquired Mr Hollywood, eventually.
“I just finished a jigsaw,” I volunteered hastily eliminating alternative recent activities such as gathering pipi, floating in the water and gathering pipi.
“Umm, we’re not going to tell anyone about that okay,” came his hasty reply.
“Why not?”
“Remember what happened with the caravan?”Indeed I do. A few years back I bought an old caravan, restored it back to it’s sparkly lino and then spent a lot of time there alone with the dog. My friends muttered amongst themselves, rumour spread that my marriage was over and all I got was the caravan in the settlement and when the dust settled my reputation as an interesting person was over. I was eccentric but in a boring way. Like Marcus Lush without the ice, the trains or Bluff.
Recently, however, I was saved from being an eccentric bore by the plethora of silly season newspapers screaming at me that caravans are cool! Caravaning is back! Interesting people with arts degrees have caravans!
One of the pieces was even written by my husband who, like Mr Hollywood and the rest of my friends regarded the caravan as an eccentricity at the time but because he loves me rode the wave and on the way back down agreed to spend some time there and got it.
So now the fact that I spend a lot of time in my 1968 Lightweight caravan is no longer evidence that I am uninteresting, I am suddenly cool.
Which is disappointing. I like being stationary and solitary and staying up to midnight without realising it to finish the sea part of my jigsaw. I didn’t even stay up to midnight on New Year’s Eve, in fact getting me to see the two hands on the number 12 requires vast amounts of persuasion these days. But when you’re half way through completing a picture of boats in a port you just have to finish the sea.
I have so far finished three jigsaws and discovered there are two provisos. They have to be vintage because the pictures are crazy. Guys sitting in front of the fire sucking on a pipe, holding a rifle with a dog at his feet, that sort of thing. And I prefer them to have a seaside theme. Apparently I like the colour blue and its many variants. The one I stayed up late for has the most astounding array of blues and greens. I am eagerly anticipating getting to work on the one of Venice during a gondola regatta from the 1960s. I have five more after that and I doubt I’ll ever run out because Op Shops keep me in constant supply for the average price of one dollar stretching to three dollars if there are no pieces missing. I am deeply indebted to the volunteer staff at the various Op Shops I haunt who sit in the back room completing the puzzles then write on a sticker “one piece missing.”
I don’t really care if it isn’t complete, it just makes it more challenging in those final moments when you have no pieces left and three holes. And that’s okay because it’s not like you get them framed and hang them or anything, although I was tempted with the beauty of the man with the dog and the pipe and the rifle and the fire.
I told Mr Hollywood that he may have been away a while and might need to remind himself that I am the antithesis of his new life. I am peace and quiet and smell nice.
I’ve just bought a jigsaw mat off Trade Me which you roll up and it magically keeps all the pieces in place and I’m not at all looking forward to a future silly season when my husband and several other journalists write moving pieces about the return of the jigsaw.

Illustration by Anthony Ellison