That's next Christmas sorted!

OVER the last few years I've designed my own Christmas cards for a smallish group of close friends. Paintings have ranged from carol singers to festive lights, all in my usual 'Crazy Art' style.

Well, Christmas 2017 is already sorted after I found myself doodling on a sheet of A4 paper the other day. A few blobs of white acrylic on to a city street scene was all it required to create a seasonal image of which I'm quite proud.

Here's a sneak preview of what's likely to be my 2017 card. Hope you like it. Creating it early gives me more time to concentrate on my two major projects for the year - a book about well-known writers living in Cornwall, and a long awaited (by my kids!) collection of my children's stories, all illustrated by Yours Truly.

The major project for 2018 is also decided - a rewrite of my popular and internationally acclaimed book Blood and Fire, about the famous 1943 murder of Sir Harry Oakes, the British Empire's richest man. Who said retirement is a doddle?

My late friend James Frew - a wartime bomber pilot, commercial airline captain, international architect and late-flowering novelist - told me when I retired as a newspaper editor eight years ago: 'You must never wake up to an empty day.'

So far, I haven't, and have no intention of doing so. Life's too good to waste.