The Aardvark Blog

Sad news for January, Borderlines Final Festival, Fleamarkets 2025, and more
18/01/2025

In general I like to start the year with good news - there is plenty of time for things to go downhill afterwards - but I am afraid that 2025 got underway with some sad news as my old friend and key Aardvark enabler Helen Vine died on New Year's Eve 2024.

For anyone whom I have bored with the origin story of Aardvark, the name Helen Vine will be familiar. As it will be to her many friends throughout the area. Helen and her husband Richard were part of that great migration of talented and artistic people to Herefordshire and the Marches in the 1970's. The attraction at that time was the beauty of the countryside and the insanely cheap price of unmodernised homes. By the time I arrived a decade later things were still cheap by today's standards, but you could no longer buy a cottage for a few thousand pounds.

When I first met Helen she was living in a large house which had her workshop at the back in South Street in Leominster, She was still running an interiors business, but was juggling this with being an effective chairperson of various local organisations. I took to her immediately and many of her sayings and ways of thinking immediately entered my mental universe.

Some years later when Edward and I started Aardvark, Helen volunteered to rent us a building for the business and also a cottage to live in. In time we grew out of her old pigsheds and moved to Brampton Bryan - the rest is history, as they say. Helen continued to be a massive support and would turn out to all our events and exhibitions. Ethel and I feel her loss very deeply, and our debt to her is too great to express. 

The last full evening I spent with Helen was last year at the Borderlines Film Festival, and by coincidence this week we have received information about the Aardvark sponsored film at this year's Borderlines. The Brutalist is a period drama set in the US and stars Adrian Brody. Why not go onto the Borderlines website and book to join us in Hereford?

We have now decided on our event dates for 2025 and these will be going up on the website next week. Due to the way the dates have fallen we have a couple of markets fewer next year, so it will make it even more important to note the dates in your diary. New event cards will also be printed shortly to pick up in the shop!