The Aardvark Blog

Jenny Beard, Thank Q's all round, Sci-Fi etc
9/07/2023

I look at my list of blogs and realise that without me realising it, nearly a month has gone by since I last wrote on these pages. And it has not been an uneventful month.

First amongst all matters is the sudden death and funeral of Jenny Beard last month. Jenny was a long-term friend and customer of the bookshop and as it happens I had seen her within the last two weeks of her life when she came to one of our Flea Markets. She made such an enormous contribution to tourism in Shropshire and Herefordshire, and was some-one whose opinion I always valued. She was a great favourite of Edward my late business partner so I console myself that they may be carrying on a celestial conversation on food and France in some far flung universe.

And so many thank Qs to give. To Frieda Hughes for coming and doing a wonderful event here at Aardvark last month. Her accounts of her raising birds and of what animals can do to give succour to a wounded heart were greeted with a transfixed silence. And I was delighted that her audience at Aardvark was much larger than the audience she had the following week at Hatchards in Piccadilly.

Thank you also to Philip Dunne for opening up Gatley Park for one evening last month for a church fundraiser held at the highest point of the estate. I was only sorry that due to the presence of young Byron we had to leave before the fireworks, because up there on the hill facing the Bircher ridge it would have been spectacular.

And many thanks to all the young people who worked during the last Flea Market at the beginning of July. At least two of them had never worked for us before and yet they worked brilliantly on what turned out to be an extremely busy day.

Finally to turn to bookish matters I have ended up acquiring two large sci-fi collections and therefore am hoping that all fans of sci-fi and fantasy will make a hasty beeline to the bookshop to help us out as we have far more books than there is space to shelve them. I am glad to say that several customers have gone out with big piles today, but there are many more books coming than going out. On the subject of books we have sold so many items from our giant £0.50 sale that I have been able already to start to restock the tables. Even if you have already been to the sale it is worth coming again as the stock is constantly changing.