The Aardvark Blog

Food Fair, New Books, Iceland Exhibition
6/06/2015

After what has been a frantic week, I reach Saturday hardly believing that we have managed to get everything done. The week ended with a very good meeting with Carolyn Chesshire about the Mortimer Country Food Fair.

Carolyn has been talking to exhibitors and it looks like we have a very good and varied selection once more this year. Very excited by the return of Penny Pengelli and her fantastic vintage tea tent. If any of you failed to make it to last year's fair, Penny was one of the stars of the show alongside our fantastic celebrity team of Jo Brand and James Strawbridge. I still marvel at their kindness in putting aside time to come to our fair, given all the other demands on their busy schedules. Whenever I see Jo on television I am always delighted, and she is living proof that sometimes nice people do finish first!

But the main activitiy of the week has been trying to accommodate the nearly 4,000 books that we have collectively bought over the last 10 days. Many of our sections - including railways, art and decorative arts, travel, transport and military - are already groaning, but we have only scratched the surface when it comes to processing the stock that we have acquired. Across the board the quality of the shop is probably the highest it has ever been, and our new team of Katy and Hilary were hard at work putting titles away yesterday afternoon.

Meanwhile we have also been planning for our next exhibition on Iceland. The Private View is on the 27th of June and judging by the work I have seen so far it should be a very exciting show. As ever it is always worth coming early to avoid disappointment. Speaking of art, our fantastic Shropshire Hills Art Show 'From Clee to Heaven' has been attracting lots of visitors and numerous sales. We past last year's total some days ago, and I was particularly pleased by the sale of one of Tim Harral's large sculptures earlier in the week. Like all our contributors Tim works hard at perfecting his art, and it is great when the works receive such an enthusiastic response. Because we have extended the show by a week, there are still 8 days after today to catch it. Just don't wait too long!

Tomorrow we have an adult birthday group coming to the café and we are always happy to accommodate party bookings if  you have something to celebrate. We also welcome groups of bikers, motorbikers and classic cars, so the Aardvark car park in the summer can be quite a colourful sight. Last week we had a fantastic three-wheel kit car, that made us all very envious ( although tackling the Herefordshire and Shropshire windy roads on three wheels might not be that easy).