I’m scary; my friend Alex told me so. But he’s not the first person to have described me thus and I’m sure he won’t be the last. I live at the end of a short lane, which is a good thing because it gives me distance from the rest of the village, and also gives people time to compose themselves before having to meet me. I don’t know why people are scared of me, but I’ve got used to it now.

I’ve never met my postman, as he won’t come to the door. He stands at the top of the lane, folds my letters into paper aeroplanes and throws them at the house. The milkman has found a novel way of keeping his distance. He brings along a cow, gives it a sharp slap on the rump and sends it trotting towards the house. I get really fresh milk that way, but the milkman does find it rather awkward trying to fit the cow into a crate when it’s empty. Even my friends find me scary, and I really can understand why; it’s bad enough having to be a widow, but being a scary widow just isn’t any fun at all. I decided to ponder this problem yesterday, and found exactly the right diversion to help me think….

Alice decided to pull everything out of the junk chest in the hall. She was looking for her sunglasses, but instead she uncovered a whole heap of useless junk - single mittens, indoor boules, torn swimming hats, bits of string and broken water pistols. I put all the junk in a bin bag, but I couldn’t throw away my favourite jigsaw puzzle. It was sitting at the bottom of the chest, it was speaking to me; it was saying, ‘Look at my fruit bowl; admire my crusty loaf. Make me, Kate, you know you want to…’

Well, it was easy when I was a girl, and now I’m so much older and wiser and lots of adults do jigsaw puzzles, don’t they? Admittedly most of them are either senile or in restraints, but even so, if an incontinent axe murderer can find peace and contentment with a jigsaw puzzle then so can I.

The pieces were a lot smaller than I remember, and there were so many of them, and most of them had the same pattern; but it was easy when I was a girl, and now I’m so much older and it should be easier, but my eye sight is worse and my knees hurt and my neck aches, but I’m going to do this; I’m going to do it for Alice.

I had to find all the edge bits so I could give Alice an easy framework to start with, and as I was doing it I thought ‘I’m not that scary. I don’t sit at the window and scowl at passers by. I kneel on the floor, getting leg cramp and eye strain, and all for the benefit of my daughter.’ That’s not scary, that’s devotion.

An hour later and I was still trying to get the outside of the jigsaw in place, and when I’d finished there were a worrying number of pieces left over. Still, that was the hard bit over and done with and now I could give my knees a rest and get back to writing my journal…
My Goddaughter has landed a part in her school musical - she’s playing a prostitute. Her mother is accepting the role with characteristic pragmatism and I’m just hoping she doesn’t show any aptitude for the job. At least the part of a prostitute is one up on the role I had to play at my school’s production of ‘Wind in the Willows’. I was overlooked for any of the major roles, and was left with the job of playing the simple, but obliging carthorse. I think my only line was, ‘Climb aboard, Mr. Toad, and I’ll give you a ride’, which, in a strange way is not too dissimilar to Annabel’s opening line of, ‘Hello dearie; fancy a good time?’ I wasn’t too badly scarred by the experience, so I’m sure my Goddaughter will be fine.

Back at the jigsaw puzzle, and I still can’t find all the bits of strawberry, and do you know what I say? I say, ‘Fuck it’. Life’s too frickin’ short to spend three hours on your knees, squinting at tiny bits of cardboard that don’t even fit together properly. I don’t know what I was thinking when I was a teenager - I should have been snogging some pustulent boy in the village bus shelter, instead of spending my time hunched over a table, trying to piece together a bowl of fruit and a crusty cob. Maybe that’s why I’ve turned out the way I have. I was a sad teenager and now I’m a scary adult, and it’s all the fault of the frickin’ jigsaw…

I can’t do it any more. It’s too hard and too fiddly and too boring and why the hell am I wasting my time engaging in a pastime for shut-ins and spinsters. I should be out in my lane, shouting at passing cars, scratching myself and looking deranged. Or, on second thoughts, maybe I should just write a bit more of my journal…

When I rang my friend Alex today to inform him of his impending appearance on this site, he apologised for the fact that he hadn’t been in touch, and told me that he hadn’t called me because he always finds me a bit scary. Alex, let me tell you what’s scary: scary is being a newly married woman with a confirmed bachelor in the house and scones to make. Charlie and I loved having Alex to stay, but there was a catch. When I was in the kitchen I always had to be on my guard, because if I bent down to put something in the Aga and Alex was in range, he would come at me from behind, grab my hips and lock on. It was a bit like being in a porn scene written by Joanna Trollope - in that we were both fully clothed, cakes were involved and the vicar was present (it was Charlie actually, but you get the idea…) But did I get cross? Did I tell him he was scary? No, I just laughed and hoped he wouldn’t do it again.

Alex is now happily married to a beautiful girl. She’s always making scones. Alex loves scones. But he’s not scary. I am.

And now back to the jigsaw. Alice came home and it was back in the box. I couldn’t put her through what I’d just been through. The still life of fruit and comestibles is now being pondered over by a little old lady in the British Heart Foundation charity shop. She’s wondering why the box is so battered and some of the bits have been chewed, and why the woman who brought in had the look of a derranged axe murderer...



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