Autumn is here!

Autumn is here, it’s now cold and damp, just this morning I put the central heating on for the first time 😔 

This month is one whole year since I retired so I thought I should make it the theme of my October blog. I really enjoyed the recent AES exhibition, I got such a warm welcome and chatted to so many friends and ex-customers. It was a lovely day and lots of people asked how I was finding retirement. I don’t feel that I chose retirement, everything had changed so much and I was working far too hard and had no spare time at all. I was juggling way too many balls and it had to end. Let’s face it, who runs a business entirely on their own? I was looking after all the animals and I had hundreds, I was constantly cleaning and feeding but quite honestly that’s the bit I enjoyed. The constant worry about posting my precious bugs was too much, I read only yesterday that Royal Mail are letting another 2,500 staff go. I didn’t have a back up plan for using any other courier and their Special Delivery service went up and up in price but it became less and less reliable. The admin had become crazy, so many people seemed to think I was Amazon and expected their parcel to arrive immediately, almost every day someone told me that they only wanted a female tarantula (ideally, of course they did but I’m not God and I chose not to sex my tarantulas – I’m not elaborating on this again but it was large part of me giving up!). I still remember the good old days when I received an order and just sent it off, if anyone had any questions they picked up the phone. Endless backwards and forwards emails and texts took time that I didn’t have. The internet and social media changed everything and it was basically too much. My husband has no interest in keeping bugs and he was fed up with me being so stressed all the time. The thing I miss most is the ping of my PayPal app on my watch. I miss looking at it and seeing that a payment had gone into my bank account 😁

So, what now? Well, I have three gorgeous grandchildren (7,2 and 4 months) and I’m very lucky that I get to spend lots of my time looking after them. We have a little collection of bugs and the boys enjoy helping care for them (Delilah is a bit young to help). I was very good at the AES exhibition, a couple of people offered me free spiders, which was lovely but I said no thank you. I did however buy myself two little Mexican Red Knees, I have always said that they were the original pet tarantula and are still the best. My husband did point out that they may well outlive me but that’s fine, I will leave them to my grandchildren 😂 Just realised something else that I absolutely miss, going into my bug room to warm up. It was kept at around 25c but now it’s as cold as the rest of the house. I still miss my customers but some people do keep in touch by email, phone and Facebook. The thing I regret most is letting my website go, I just didn’t realise I would not have access to any of my information but I have had to accept that is gone forever 😪

I wrote the last blog while lying on a sunbed in Cyprus and have just transferred it onto my desktop from my phone. It showed up all the mistakes I had made so sorry for that 😂 It was a nice holiday but there was a cloud over us as I was going though a health scare and awaiting the test results from a biopsy. Sadly, we did have to cancel our UK holiday with our daughter and family as the biopsy was scheduled for that week but thankfully I got the all clear when we got back from Cyprus. It does go to show that life is short and there’s better things to do than panic about work. I don’t earn any money now but my husband still works full time so I spend his instead!

I am all over the place today, I have had so many interruptions that I keep restarting and remembering something else that I was going to say. A couple of other things about the AES show – I have never before had the time to listen to any organised talks but this time I thought “why not” so we went along to the talk from Britain Kitten of Creature Courage. I thought it was about animal phobias and it might be useful just in case I ever do start doing animal phobia workshops (always thinking about something else I could do in the future). Anyway, it was superb, she only touched on phobias about animals, her main focus was on anxiety. We sat at the front (I never like to miss out) and it was so relevant to me, I have always suffered from anxiety, I felt like she was talking directly to me and about me. Afterwards my husband said he thought the same thing, it was an inspiring talk but if I were to do phobia workshops, it would be entirely the animal and feeling comfortable handling it. Let’s face it, what a great excuse it would be to get a couple more pets, definitely mice and rats, I already have snakes, spiders, scorpions, cockroaches. My husband has banned me from getting more pets at the moment! I do keep looking longingly at dogs but they are such a tie, I would love a German Sheppard however our daughter has been bitten twice by dogs in her life and both have been German Sheppards, she is not a fan. I have been bitten far more times than that by various breeds but I still love dogs 😄 (Cocker spaniel, Scotty dog, Eurasier, Vizla, cross German Sheppard and many, many little animals, clearly I am not very careful 😂)

Lastly, we all have Halloween to look forward to 👻🎃🕷🦇🦂

Happy Halloween Everyone