Virginia Cheeseman Blog

I had a rare day off on Wednesday and went to Whipsnade zoo with my nephew's family. It was a lovely day, pouring with rain in the morning but when we arrived at lunch time (got stuck on the M25) the sun had come out and the afternoon was beautiful. I have never been to Whipsnade before, I had no idea it was so big. It is more of a safari park than a zoo, we took the car in and drove from exhibit to exhibit. I loved the fact that the animals had so much space and some were even allowed to roam free. We mingled with wallabies, deer and mara. The Discovery centre had a good range of bugs and spiders, plus stunning reptiles. Sadly we missed the 'meet the bugs show', I was out voted by three kids who wanted to stay longer at the play area! I know I have been asking people to call with questions rather than keep emailing me but honestly I cannot believe how many calls I had on Wednesday (not a moan, just an observation). The phones have been really busy all week due to half te...

I thought last week was busy! This week has been incredible. I decided to buy in lots of new stock before the half term week and before the weather becomes too bad. It seemed like a good plan but in reality I have over done it a bit. I have spent every morning packing up and posting out orders, every afternoon housing and feeding both old and new animals and every evening doing emails and paperwork. I do intend to take a little time for me next week and get out and about with the family (well that's the plan). Everything seems to be going well in the bug house, considering how many new creatures I have, I actually feel quite organised. Thanks to my endless lists I know exactly what has been fed and tended to this week and those that will have to be done over the weekend. I always mean to have the feeding finished by Saturday but I rarely do. I have some super new stick insects arriving this evening. I visited the local Homebase car park yesterday to stock up on bramble. Unfortunate...

A very busy week, lots of orders coming in and things to do. The weather is steadily getting colder, I will soon be using heat packs in my parcels. The post has been really reliable lately, I have had no delayed parcels reported to me for ages (if you don't count the parcel that I sent to Finland recently, goodness knows how but it was delivered to New Zealand and the poor guy is still trying to get it back!). I have sold quite a few of the spiders and bugs that I purchased from the AES show, so now I am ordering in lots of new stock, it should arrive over the next couple of weeks. I will then be well stocked for Christmas, which is approaching fast. I was sent a beautiful book this week, at first I thought it was a competition win but then I realised that it was the new book from Dorling Kindersley and it had been sent to me as I provided a Jungle Nymph stick insect to be photographed. The book is called 'The Natural History Book'(the ultimate visual guide to everything o...

The bug show was great at Kempton Park last Saturday. I was trying to work out how many years I have been attending the AES show and it is an awful lot! It is always nice to catch up with people year after year and also meet customers that I have only spoken to on the phone or communicated with by email. I took an extensive shopping list with me and purchased a huge amount of new stock. I tried to stick to mostly arachnids because that is undoubtedly what I sell primarily these days. I did get a few new stick insects and even some praying mantids. I know I said I was giving them up but I haven't seen any Cryptic mantids for ages and I am especially fond of them. I remember first seeing them at London Zoo and I thought they were beautiful. They seem to be fine kept as a colony which is most unusual for mantids. I checked on them yesterday and they looked very happy and healthy. Obviously my week has been taken up with housing, feeding, labelling and the incredibly time consuming job...

Happy birthday to my website. It's a new month today and a new year for my bug business. I would say that I can't believe it is a whole year since my 'new' automated website went live but it actually seems much longer! I really hate change but so often when I take the leap it leaves me feeling 'how on earth did I manage before'. I don't know how I ever coped with taking credit card orders over the phone. It was fraught with problems, I would write down a wrong digit, the customer would read something incorrectly and then quite regularly I would ring up for authorisation only for it to be refused. There was also the responsibility of storing everyone's card details. Some bits of information were kept on my computer files but expiry dates etc. were written on a piece of paper and locked away in my office safe (if you are thinking of breaking in for a spot of burglary at this point there is nothing in the safe now, all card details were destroyed and with a...