99 Bees

It's likely a sign of advancing years, but I think that there's few things quite as pleasing as gently shaking a neatly-wrapped present and hearing the tell-tale sound of a jigsaw. It's a theory which, on first thought, works less well for antique vases or Thermos flasks although, to a certain extent, these items would still be a jigsaw, I guess. But I digress. This particular jigsaw is entitled "99 Bees".

As can be seen, it consists of 9 rows of eleven square photographs, all featuring some sort of bloom and at least one bee. Several photographs contain multiple bees, which did make me think "Hmmm...", but in my excitement to commence the jigsaw, I put any thoughts of such pedantry to one side.

Mind you, by the time I had completed the edges, I'd uttered quite a few Bs myself.

Despite all the awful weather keeping us indoors, progress was painfully slow, as we'd normally finish a 1000 piece puzzle in 4 or 5 days. One particularly dastardly sub-plot was that several of the photographs were the same, just at slightly different levels of zoom.

However, with several serial storms in one week, we eventually completed the jigsaw in a little under a month.

So you could say that we were helped by The Met Office and The Weatherman.