Give Piece a Chance

[Birchy]

Any clues re-"Doing My Pieces"? ..... meaning "at the end of my tether/worried/greatly concerned/irritatus maximus"?

[allen ives]

I think it must be a portmanteau of a phrase, i.e. made up of misremembered or misheard parts of other phrases, such as 'doing my head in', 'going to pieces', and so on. On a similar level, I once heard a girl say 'it was a real catch twenty situation'.(It wasn't, so she'd obviously neither read the book nor understood the original meaning).

[incitatus]

There is another usage...."doing his pieces" was an equivalent for paying your dues. Someone who was doing his pieces was learning a trade or skill. It refers to the pieces of work required of an apprentice as exams...which were the apprentice piece, the journeyman piece and (in some cases) the master piece......Though this doesnt seem to be the usage you are referring to.