Virginia Cheeseman Blog

My big birthday is on Sunday, I can’t believe I will be 60! We will be having a Costa Rican themed birthday party (I think you all probably know by now that I love Costa Rica “voted happiest country on Earth”). I started off inviting a few family and friends over for a cream tea in the afternoon but over the last couple of weeks I seem to have mentioned it to more and more people, oops, I think there may be 100 or so people turn up. That’s a lot of cream scones but worse than that, how are we going to fit everyone in the house? Plus, we live in a cul-de-sac, it is Sunday afternoon, where is everyone going to park. Oh well, it’s my birthday, I shouldn’t have to worry about it! Last weekend was lovely, we went down to the Ashford International hotel on Saturday and enjoyed a meal out with the Invicta spider group in the evening (the guys who work so hard to make the annual show, the huge success that it always is). The SEAS show on Sunday was packed, the first visitor to begin the queue,...

Happy days, I’m off to the SEAS bug show this weekend. It is my favourite show, a great venue, a super friendly team who work hard each year to make it the success that it always is and at the perfect time for me to re-stock! I have my shopping list ready and will be wandering around the show with my now famous purple clip board (famous because last year someone thought I was an inspector doing checks and reported this to the organisers, who quickly pointed out that it was just me with my extensive shopping list). I will be concentrating on new tarantula species but I will also be looking at scorpions, I hope to get some Whip scorpions and I have already pre-ordered 20 Giant Train millipedes. However many millipede species I have, the Train millipedes are always the most sought after. I am trying to cut back on the number of millipedes that I keep as I’m fed up with collecting leaf litter and wood for them. I am also fed up with lugging their heavy boxes full of soil around. That said,...

Busy, busy, the sun is shining and it’s a bright new year. I have high hopes for 2019, my New Year’s resolution is in full swing. I decided that Wednesday is Ginny’s Jungle day, I cannot really expect to make a go of my local events business if I don’t put the effort into it, by effort, I mean time and money :). This Wednesday I got to grips with lots of things that I have been putting off for ages, arranging advertising, writing letters to send out to schools. I mean ‘writing’ on the computer, not by hand, imagine how long that would take! However, I intend to print the letters and put them in the post, enclosing a Ginny’s Jungle leaflet. I think it is much more likely to be noticed and hopefully read than just sending an email. It's been a mega busy ‘Spider Week’ thanks to the power of Facebook. You may have noticed on the website (pink info box) that I am once again running my popular “Make me an offer on a spider” promotion. It took a few days to get going but the last couple o...

It’s been go, go, go, this week! What a busy time, after the problems with the post before Christmas when Royal Mail were obviously too busy to deliver parcels! I decided to resume sending orders this week rather than directly after New Year’s Day as I generally do. I had such a back-log of orders to sort that it took me until Wednesday to get everything out but I’m pleased to say that all went well with no delays and no complaints. In fact, quite the opposite, I have received more 5 star reviews this week than the whole of December J I can’t spend too long on the blog as I seem to have done nothing but process and pack orders, my feeding/cleaning regime has gone a bit to pot so the weekend will see me getting to grips with the nitty gritty of bug keeping, feeding, washing tanks and boxes, mopping the floor and as ever moving things around to make a bit more space. I did manage to sort an area of our loft out over Christmas and intend to store some of my bug things up there, rather tha...