Picking up the pieces
Jun 03, 2020
4 minutes
WHEN, as a boy, I received a wrapped Christmas or birthday present that had the tell-tale jigsaw rattle, I would go into a panic: how am I going to able to feign pleasure at receiving this? If the giver were not in the room, I might not be bothered even to open it. I would do so eventually and, on a sufficiently rainy Sunday afternoon, the puzzle would be completed. A jigsaw was a very low-status toy: a cardboard box with yet more cardboard inside. Today, I realise that a jigsaw is—to quote the novelist Margaret Drabble (to whom we will be
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