Bohemia Village Voice

Marilyn Bridger puts on a brave smile as her shop closes.

The Village Voice is sad to have to announce the closure of one of the best-loved businesses in the area. Bohemian Scrapsody closed at the beginning of March after almost three years trading under that name. Shop owner Marilyn Bridger told us, ‘I’ve had to close it down for the sake of my health. It’s sad – I’ve made some nice friends doing this – but my family were all saying that it’s time to stop now.’
HAIRTEK
Marilyn and her husband used to live above the property at 89–91 Bohemia Road, and ran a hair salon, Hairtek, from the shop downstairs. Then the salon moved to Queen’s Road, and Marilyn had an empty double-fronted shop to fill. ‘We still lived above, so I decided to clear out the loft,’ she says. ‘So I moved it down here to see what I wanted to keep. The things I decided to get rid of became stock for the shop. At first I called it Shabby Chic, but people didn’t understand the name, so I changed it to Bohemian Rhapsody. The stock changed from furniture to gifts and flowers and then eventually to scrapbooking, which was my hobby anyway.’
PARKING
Two and a half years ago the Queen’s Road business was sold, and Marilyn’s husband moved to Tonbridge to work. Since then he has commuted every day to Bohemia Road. She says the stress started to get to her last year after a woman who helped her in the shop had to give up work to care for a sick relative. This problem was compounded by the difficulty of trying to keep a business like hers going on Bohemia Road. ‘Customers complain about the lack of parking,’ she says. ‘The Council doesn’t support us. Even being able to park here on a single yellow line on a Saturday would’ve made a tremendous difference.’
SCRAPSODY
The shop has been called Bohemian Scrapsody since May 2004, but even in such a short time Marilyn has seen the popularity of this niche sector grow enormously. ‘When I first started, I was the only one doing scrapbooking in the area. Now all the supermarkets and the internet are places where people can get things cheaper than I can sell them.’
CREATIVE
Marilyn has also run classes from the shop, which have proved a great success and attracted people from all over the region. ‘People who take up this hobby are often lacking in confidence, and often they don’t think they are capable of being creative,’ she says. ‘But they come to the classes and they make friends they didn’t expect to have, and discover hidden talent in themselves.’
VICTORIAN
Scrapbooking is originally a Victorian pastime that the Americans have re-invented to cater for modern trends and preservation of material. It is a hobby that involves telling a story by using personal photographs and journaling set against a background of decorative papers and embellishments. ‘Scrapbooking is very therapeutic.
INSPIRATION
Marilyn admits to being sad to leave the business behind. ‘I’ve had some really lovely emails from customers saying how much they’ll miss the shop and how much inspiration it has given them as an outlet for their creative talents. I’ll try and keep in touch with everybody by email. I can recommend names of other local crops [gatherings] they can go to. But I’ll have a couple of months off and then start looking around. In any case, I’ll be coming back to Hollington once a week to see my mother-in-law, so I won’t be leaving the area behind. I couldn’t do that. I really love it round here.’