The Aardvark Blog

Planning for the rest of the year
21/02/2022

One exciting thing that happened last week, was the arrival of our new, blue, 2022 Aardvark leaflet. We send out over 40,000 copies of the brochure every year and it is one of the best ways for people to find out about the shop, and our events programme. I am always amazed the way in which people pick up a copy of our leaflet and hold onto it for a few years before planning their visit. We have put together a few events for 2022 - a celebration of gardens at Easter, with The Cottage Herbery, car boot sales, a wonderful day of poetry and prose curated by Anna Dreda, our July Book Sale, and even, we hope, a Civil War Re-enactment. There is much still to do to confirm details in these uncertain times, but we are taking bookings for our car boot events -still at £10 a pitch! For dates and more information, go to our Aardvark Events page!

Today I am working in the bookshop with Ethel - a rare Monday in the shop for me - because we were worried about getting into the shop due to the last few days rain and wind. I have to say we had a couple of hairy moments on our way in, but we made it ok (as did two of our colleagues) and are currently working on packing and sending out quite a large number of parcels ( a surprisingly large amount for February).

For the last few years Monday has become a day when we shut to the public, and it does allow us to do a few things that are difficult to do when the shop is busy with customers. Ethel has been putting out the first cards to arrive from the big card orders we placed at the Spring Fair a couple of weeks ago. It is always great to see the new designs from our suppliers, and alongside restocks of some customer favourites there are quite a  few cards that are new for 2022.

We still have another 3 or 4 orders to come in, so by the time all our purchases have arrived our spinners will be groaning again with our usual brilliant selection of cards (the last few weeks whilst we have been waiting for our purchases to arrive I have been conscious that the spinners were looking a little bare).

Due to weather yesterday we were forced to close a couple of hours earlier than usual. I am very sorry should you have tried to visit us, but the weather was so bad I was worried about every-one being able to get home safely. This has been a strange mild winter with something of a sting in the tale. The forecast looks a little brighter for the next few days - although another storm is threatened - so hopefully things should gradually improve for the half-term week.

Now since I am unexpectedly in the shop I am going to go back to the mammoth task of working through our accumulated book backlog in the warehouse.