The Aardvark Blog

Out of the loop
24/01/2015

It is amazing how quickly one starts to feel out of the loop when one has been out of the bookshop for a few days. Last week a combination of the way that days off fell, a brief cold and a funeral, meant that I only spent a few days in the shop from Monday to Friday.

Needless to say that my being out of the building doesn't stop things rolling on, and I have got in  this morning to a long list of things that have happened in my abscence. First off Gareth Rees-Roberts came in to talk to Sarah about his playing at the Valentine's event. Whilst he was here he happened to mention that a friend of his had done a short film about an English Civil War event at Marlborough for the UKTV online channel. When Sarah told him that the ECWS were coming again in August he was amazed, as he had never realised that that was the group  that ran our re-enactment.

Other big news came with the arrival of our new leaflet, hot off the press from the printers. This year 34,000 copies of the Aardvark brochure and events listing will be distributed all over Wales, the Welsh borders and the West Midlands. If you would like us to send you a copy please let us know and we will pop one in the post. The arrival of the new leaflet is always very exciting as it heralds the start of a new tourism year. Next week will be spent getting copies out to the principal local TIC's, as well as sending to all the B and B's and hotels in the area. We are very dependent on local accommodation providers to recommend the shop to visitors, and I always hope that some good comes to them by people coming to see us and wishing to stay in  the area.

The one thing I did achieve last week was a good meeting with the Visual Works about the development of our website. The problems that we have received with some of the basic processes of the site should be finally sorted out shortly, and we have a wealth of new ideas for the site that we will seek to implement this year.

Lots of stall bookings for the food fair have arrived and Sarah had a very good meeting with Carolyn about this year's fair. We have also confirmed that this year we will be lending our demo kitchen to the Flavours of Hereford Food Fair in a show of intra-fair communal support. Very exciting news about this year's fair in Hereford, that I can't wait to share once the news embargo is lifted in March.

We are also looking at ways to introduce some of the fantastic Aardvark Café cakes to a new audience at the Ludlow Medieval Fair, but our plans for that are still also hush hush. What is not hush hush is our fantastic exhibition of prints of the Annamult Press and of the Carver Lottie O'Leary in April. I am perhaps more excited about this exhibition than any other we have mounted. Last weekend I had a local gallery owner in the shop, and he was equally enthusiastic about the size and quality of the Annamult prints that I showed him. There will also be a small catalogue telling the story of the Annamult Press available during the show.