Virginia Cheeseman Blog

The BTS Show was super. The new venue was excellent. There was plenty of space to move around and see everything and everyone. Sometimes bug shows can be terribly crowded with not enough room to move between the stalls. It often feels like trying to get a drink on a busy night in a bar, you can see what you want but you can’t actually get near enough to place your order. I didn’t do too badly at the show (I was repeating my mantra to myself – no more pets), I mostly stuck to my shopping list but I still spent several hundred pounds on new animals, so as you can imagine, I have been chasing my tail all week. I got some lovely bugs, tarantulas, jumping spiders, stick insects, snails (including two of the biggest snails I have ever seen, perfect for my bug parties – I think working pets are ok?), millipedes, scorpions, etc. I was so tempted by these gorgeous little crabs that I saw, they were so cute and their eyes were looking at me. It took a lot of will power to walk away from them. I ...

Not enough of me to go around! If I had a clone everything would be fine but as it is there are not enough hours in a day. The major problem this week is that I have hardly been here enough to get my work done. As you all know by now I love lists, I have a daily “must do” list (22 items – I’ve just counted) and I enjoy ticking off the jobs as I go about my day. This week I had full ticks on Monday and Tuesday, then it fell apart for the rest of the week. Wednesday I was asked to go into my great niece’s class to talk about and show some bugs, I actually visited two classes and the preparations before and the putting everything away afterwards took more or less the entire day. Yesterday I sent off my orders and then sadly had a funeral to attend in London. This afternoon I will yet again need to be elsewhere. On Sunday I am off to a bug show so next week will be taken up with sorting out any new purchases. I am really, really going to ‘try’ to stick to my list and purchase only animals ...

Friday 13th again, is it me or do we have a lot of Friday 13th's? It has been a crazy week, I clearly have too many bugs as it actually took me until Tuesday to get everything fed after the holiday. I am now nicely set up for the weekend but come Monday it will all start again! I really could have done without another power failure yesterday morning. I had loads of orders to get off and my husband had already gone to work before I realised that once again there was no power to my bug room and office. I was pretty panicked as without electricity I am truly power-less, no computer, no lights, no internet. I couldn’t even get into the garage to check the power supply as the door is electrically controlled and on the same circuit. I ended up phoning my hubby and he had no choice but to come home and sort it. He is pretty sure he has isolated the fault this time but as we already knew, he will need to rewire this side of the house. He ended up working from home (too far to go back again...