Virginia Cheeseman Blog

Half term mayhem, lots to do with the animals, lots to do with the family and thankfully lots of orders to post off. It's just a shame that the weather has been so awful, we have had non-stop rain here. Wednesday I was supposed to be on an arranged "butterfly and mini-beasts" walk with my nephew's children but it was cancelled as there was absolutely no chance of seeing any butterflies in the cold and wet! We ended up going bowling and guess who got three strikes in a row? I was super excited (Max, aged 11 still beat me because up until that point my score was only 1). We went bowling with a voucher that I won some time ago and I know it is truly unbelievable when we got home I received an email telling me that I have won another cruise! I am a competitions nut and you may recall that I have won two cruises before. This time we are off to Cyprus, Turkey and Israel in September. I must get back to the bugs but I will just say that we had already booked a summer holid...

Rush, rush, rush - this week has been crazy. The BTS (British Tarantula Society) annual exhibition was great last Sunday but as usual I went nuts and couldn't resist all the beautiful spiders and other creepy crawlies (actually I was pretty good at mostly sticking with spiders). Consequently I have been chasing my tail ever since, all the new stock needed feeding, housing, labelling, cataloguing and entering onto the website. I have now entered it all onto the website other than a couple of species that turned out to be in the nymph stage and not quite 'proper' spiderlings yet. They will need to moult before I can send them out. Everything has been fed but quite a few spiders are in 'temporary accommodation' until I can sell some others and make room for them. I sent out some spiders yesterday so that freed up a few new homes. Unfortunately Monday is yet another bank holiday! I cannot tell you how much I hate bank holidays, they cause chaos with the post. I no lon...

Back by popular demand! It seems that everyone (100% of those who replied) would like my blog to revert back to once a week. I was going to compromise on once a fortnight but I have been told that many of my customers enjoy reading the blog at the end of each week. Obviously nobody is forced to read it, I don't send it out in an email but it will be here each Friday, should you wish to read about the trials and tribulations of my life. I do try to stick with bug related stories but I have a habit of going off at a tangent, hence I do tend to refer to my blog as "the weekly whinge". I have plenty to whinge about this week! My lovely next door neighbour (who took in so many of my parcels and made endless cups of tea for me) moved away, into sheltered accommodation yesterday. That loony dog of mine managed to pull me over in the park again. I was sitting on a bench, talking on my phone when she took off after an approaching puppy. Before I knew what was happening I had ...

It's been a whole month since I wrote my last blog. Was it too long? You tell me? I may compromise on writing the blog once a fortnight but every week was honestly taking too much time. I'm sure lots has happened in the last month, it's just a case of remembering it! The open afternoon that I had in April was a success and I have another one planned for next week (see the pink information box for details). Several people came and each made a 20 minute appointment, although people are welcome to just turn up, on this occasion nobody did. It became clear that 20 minutes wasn't enough so I have changed the appointments to 30 minute slots. I hope to have regular open afternoons but it depends if people continue to come along. It is really nice to have a chat and meet some of my customers. Lots of bugs are breeding at the moment, it is a lovely time of year. The Hissing cockroaches have recently reproduced for the first time this year, they give birth to live babies,...