I’ve been trying to remember the last time I did a puzzle and I think it might have been with Offspringette who was staying here in the weeks before she headed off to New Zealand. That was over eight years ago, and we’d been sorting her ‘stuff’ in the loft.
I wonder if your children do, or did this.
For a few years, their often peripatetic lives mean no permanent base, so they come home with boxes and say ‘I’ll just put this in the loft,’ and so it goes on...and on. Our biggest mistake was probably building on a large single storey sitting room (which is now more of a studio and Bookhound’s lair with just the two of us) and creating a huge loft above with a lovely safe ladder, making it readily accessible.
Anyway Offspringette got ruthless with her stash and in amongst it all we found a puzzle still in its shrink wrap which we decided to do. It was a wonderful few days as we commandeered the kitchen table and chatted as we puzzled, and it was this I recalled as I headed back into puzzle-dom last week.
Tavistock is very fortunate to have quite a few unique little shops and one of them is Howard’s puzzle shop, I’m not sure that’s what it’s called but it’s in King Street and it’s been there forever. Howard’s parent’s used to run a bookshop next door. Owen’s was quite an unusual bookshop back in the 1980s. Every book was in a plastic bag and if you had children in a buggy they had to be parked by the door and were allowed no further, so I never really looked on it as a treasure of a shop, but the elders of the town most certainly did. Everyone ordered their books from Owen’s until a rival user-friendly indie bookshop opened and then along came W.H.Smiths. Owen’s limped along for years and Owen’s son Howard would eventually open his puzzle shop next door, his parents died and he’s been going ever since.
We’ve often wondered, through the onslaught of online selling, how this little shop has stayed afloat, but somehow it has. Sometimes it can look a bit sad too, there’s no denying it; the completed puzzles in the window display faded by the sun, the paint peeling around the shop front. And yet inside it’s a riot of colour and nirvana for any keen puzzlers as we’ve recently rediscovered.

One of the things we had noticed about Tinker’s Cott was that our guests often brought a puzzle along with them and kindly left it behind, so last year Bookhound and I decided a trip to Howard’s might be a good idea to increase our stock. We hadn’t been in there for years, but what an Aladdin’s cave it turned out to be, and what a lovely time we had choosing.

And there the puzzle has sat undone until last week when I finally cracked open the box, set myself up in the lovely cosy Tinker’s Cott sitting room, lit the fire and proceeded.

The best thing about this room, and one of the things we’ve always loved about it, is the winter sun. It faces south and when the sun is low in the sky it shines in to brighten and warm the room all the day long. Light matters in the depths of winter and we follow it around the house and soak it up.
Finding my puzzle brain has been really interesting and very therapeutic. It's about flow and very quickly the world and its worries disappears.
First off you tip it all out, 1000 pieces, and think maybe I’ll just put it all back in the box right now...
But maybe I’ll just find a few edge pieces first...
And as I laid out the pieces my heart sank a bit as I looked at the picture and wondered why we’d chosen it...
That rug...that sofa. Impossible, every bit looked the same.
Slowly the edge pieces emerged and I discovered that old feeling because it only takes a few moments of joining them up for the bug to bite doesn’t it.
And gradually my brain slipped into puzzle mode...
Searching for colours...
’Learning’ my picture...
Sometimes looking for a piece by shape rather than content...two sticky out bits on the side, one higher than the other...
I switched on a new audio book, Erika, I think it was you who recommended The Testament by John Grisham as one of his best books. Thank you, it is spot on, I’m really enjoying it as I puzzle.
'Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. His heirs, to no one's surprise - especially Troy's - are circling like vultures.
Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage is a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humour. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.
Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumbrances, and went to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the deepest jungles of Brazil.
In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure, their lives are forever altered by the startling secret of The Testament.'
I've struggled to settle to any reading after the marathon that was The Mirror & the Light, (my thoughts coming soon) so the puzzle interlude has been good.
And of course the upshot is addiction.
’I’ll just go in and do a bit more sofa...”
’If I could just find that cat’s ear....’
’It’s no good, I can’t go to bed until I’ve found this piece with a bit of blue on the sticky out side...’
And so Saturday morning found us in town for a return visit to Howard’s to buy more puzzles to see me through to next year, and how lovely it was. We had coffee and cake in the Bedford for the first time since February,

We wandered around our favourite shops and the market, spoke to lots of people, and the atmosphere was so warm and friendly. Everyone released, albeit under caution, but plenty of us trying to support local business. Easy enough to buy a puzzle online and have it delivered the next day, but how much better to go into Howard’s, have a chat, browse the shelves, get one of his meticulously hand-written receipts and listen to his patient and detailed summary of the benefits of our Ravensburger loyalty card, which now has three stamps on it.
Anyway, that’s me stocked up for the foreseeable and now over to you. There must be more puzzlers out there, or perhaps something else has claimed you with a very slight addiction.
I’d welcome any good puzzle tips too...
Do you work on small patches...
Work by colour...
Choose by the shape of the piece...
Honestly, who’d have thought it.
Oh yes, and I finished it...

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