After 10 years, I have decided to repaint the kitchen drawer knobs. We all painted images on one or more of these when we modernized the kitchen a few years ago - here's a picture I painted of Alice, now a bit the worse for wear. When painting her, I realised how sad she looks in so many of the Tenniel pictures. I don't think I found one which showed her smiling or laughing. (sorry the pic is so blurry)

Alice

I've just repainted the one which reflects another of my loves- a cup of tea.

tea

You need a steady hand to do these paintings as the surface is curved. I did them in gouache and varnished them but to get proper coverage I should have used acrylics

I've also decided to re-start learning German - think I'll try Yabla

But that's summer holiday stuff - not WORK.

True, I'm happy to be without a major work project at this very moment. This summer I've sometimes felt like the White Rabbit, rushing around crying "Oh my ears and whiskers!" We've had house guests of all ages, and seen a lot of friends.

But soon the holidays will be over and then what next? Over the last year I've been doing articles on travel in Europe, with the idea of rejoining the British Guild of Travel Writers as a full member (I dropped back to being an Associate some years ago). Th ere are some very nice people in the Guild and it runs very useful meetings on all aspects of travel and the professional writing life. I really value being part of it all. But reasonably enough, you need to do a LOT of travelling to fulfil their full membership quota and right now I feel like Alice trying to keep up with the White Queen - every time I think I might just get there, I realise that actually I'm no nearer the goal.

And how frustrating that I can't research any travel stories in New York while I'm there, because of visa restrictions.

So maybe my next book project should be to do with travel. Writing a travel related book would get me back into the Guild's full membership. Or should it be something else about Lewis Carroll? About children's literature? Or something completely different?

It will need to be something that earns money without having to wait around too long, unless sales figures are good enough to tide me over a while. With two different publishers, THE MYSTERY OF LEWIS CARROLL will have two sets of sales figures.