A Present from Aunty Tina

It was time for our spring washes this week.  After we had sat beside the radiator to dry and put our clean pyjamas on, we remembered that Aunty Tina had delivered a present for us a couple of weeks ago.  

It was a jigsaw puzzle, of narrowboats on a canal, which she thought we would like.

'Let's do our jigsaw puzzle,' I suggested to the other bears.  'We can lay it out on the chess table.'

It was very exciting for us, because we had never done a jigsaw puzzle before.

Aunty Tina had put the edge pieces in a separate bag, so we put them out on the table first.  Hanley Bear suggested we started with the sky, so he and Waverley collected all the pale blue pieces and fitted them together.

I studied the other pieces and found the watery ones, then sorted out those with trees and buildings.  It was quite difficult working out which ones fitted together but we were patient little bears and finally had the frame of the puzzle completed.

'What shall we do next?' asked Endon.  Hanley said it might be best to do the sky first again, as we could collect all the light blue pieces from the bigger bag.  

'Let's put all the pieces in the box and turn them up the right way,' I said.  'There isn't room for them all on the table, so I'll pass out the colours you ask for.' 

Hanley and Endon worked on the sky together, while Waverley started putting together the big brick building to the right of the picture.  When the easier parts of the sky were done, Hanley started working on the side of the warehouse.

I put some of the canal water pieces in place while Endon worked on the trees.  Waverley asked if he could do the bottom right-hand corner, where there were some ducks, so I searched in the box for the pieces he needed.

'Let's leave the boats until last!' said Hanley.  'Then we can all do those together.'

We decided that was an excellent idea.   

Waverley carried on working on his corner, finding all the ducks and the wild flowers along the towpath.  Meanwhile, Endon was busy with the trees, Hanley was collecting pieces with people on and I was sorting out the pieces still in the box and passing them out to my friends.

'Now we need to find the pieces for the horse and cart,' I said.

'You should do that, Sonning!' said Endon.  'Me and Waverley will look for pieces for you and Hanley.'

Hanley put together the pieces with the people watching the boats, using the picture to help him work out exactly where they fitted.

I found all the milk-churn pieces and the horse and cart, and soon there were just the spaces left for the two boats.

Waverley sorted out the remaining pieces, cleverly noticing that the patterns and lettering for the boat by the wharf are smaller.  We let him put the last pieces into the smaller boat. 

Then we set to work on the bigger boat, including the man on the tiller and his little dog on the roof.  We decided to let Waverley put the very last piece in again.

'It's finished!' said Hanley.  'Well done, everybear!'

It was a very pretty picture too, although there is something slightly strange about the big boat; although it's a horse-boat or a butty, without an engine, so would need to be towed, it's moving along on its own!

'I wonder when we'll be back on the canals,' said Hanley Bear.

'I hope it will be soon,' I replied.  'We haven't been able to take Waverley for a trip on Uppie yet.'

We know we must be patient little bears and wait until it is safe for our human guardians to go boating, but we do miss being boat bears and are very much looking forward to having boating adventures again.