A busy week with lots of new orders.

A busy week with lots of new orders. I have brought in quite a few spiders but I have also sent out a great deal, which is always good. I am busy preparing for the AES exhibition next week, it is several years since I manned a stall. I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. I intend to spend Friday packing up bugs for the show and then hopefully I will sell them all on the Saturday! In my dreams - sadly it is very difficult to know what will sell at an exhibition. I will mostly be taking animals that I have bred myself and plant eating bugs that I don't want to feed all winter. I doubt if I will take many spiders, although I think I should pack my multitude of adult males, in the hope that someone might want them! My daughter assures me that she will help pack things on Friday and then man the stall on Saturday. My husband will also be there to help but he has never been, and never will be keen on bugs. I certainly need time to mingle and pick up new stock. It is always good to meet up with people at shows and of course I do like a good chat, I am never short of something to say. I intend to make a badge so that everyone knows who I am. I have been searching the house for the last couple of weeks, I am so annoyed that I just cannot find my 'exhibition table cloth'. Some of you may remember it, it is bright yellow with Virginia Cheeseman printed all over it in bold, black print. It was made for me many years ago by my good friends from the British Tarantula Society, Ann and Frank Webb. Sadly both Ann and Frank passed away a couple of years ago. Times certainly change, there are still lots of the 'old crowd' at the exhibitions but there are also a lot of new, younger bug people. I have been around for so long that most people know who I am, if not by sight then certainly by name. I have always worked under my name and it has never seemed to be the right time to change it. I would rather be called something like "Creepy Crawly Pets" or "Ginny's Jungle". Unfortunately my real name doesn't have much of a ring about it. Sometimes when I am entering competitions I use the name "Holly Rainbow", I don't think Holly has ever won much but it is such a pretty name. I am going to a 'competitions day' this Saturday, I won £1,000 from the last meeting but I think that was a one off. Still, it is a day up in London and always fun, plus it gets me away from work. Much as I love my bugs I do find myself working every waking hour when I am at home. I need to get out to have a break.

I mentioned recently that I was going to look at four wheel drive cars before the winter sets in. Well we went and looked this week and after seeing the price I have decided to stick with my Vauxhall Meriva and get some winter tyres fitted to it! I didn't realise how expensive they were, I have no interest in cars and it may not even snow this winter so I have gone right off that idea. It didn't help that I searched online for a Suzuki dealers to look at Rav4 cars and when we got there I realised that the Rav4 is actually made by Toyota, oops.

I have decided to stop tormenting myself about the addresses matching on PayPal. I would really like people to have their order sent to their PayPal registered address but I don't think there is any way or point in me trying to enforce it. If I am concerned I will ring the customer to check things out. I rang one poor girl and quizzed her about the address not matching and she was very concerned and volunteered to call PayPal, I told her that it was fine and there really was no need. Almost all my customers are decent people and I don't think there is any way to know in advance who those couple of (trying to think of the best word here?) unscrupulous people are (not the word I would like to use for them). I did eventually, this week get my £60 back from PayPal, that I mentioned last week but I am still very disappointed with their service and would like to change to another payment provider for my website. I will be contacting my web guy to see what he would advise. It may be too complicated and costly to change. Let's face it the banks always come out winning, whichever provider I use they will always make sure that when things go wrong, I lose and they win.

Anyway, lots of things to do, endless animals to feed and as usual there's only me here doing it. People find it very difficult to believe that my family have no interest and have nothing to do with my work (the bug house is at the end of the garden, as far away from the house as possible). My idiot daughter is for some reason terrified of slugs. I inadvertently mentioned that the front path was covered in giant slugs the other day. She was going out that evening and said it took about twenty minutes to get up the path as she had to light her way with her mobile phone, in case she got too near to one!