In the 1990s, before the internet had misappropriated Dawkins’ term “meme” to mean just some vaguely amusing shared repeatedly with a bold outline font make a “witty” statement about cats, we started a meme in holiday home visitors’ books. There was a whole gang of us who used to convene annually in some delighful multi-room residence in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, or elsewhere. We’d eat, drink and be merry and do lots of long hikes between select pubs. It was great fun, always organised by our very good friend Chris W and we did it every year for a decade.
We always said something nice in the book about the rental in which we spent our long weekends, and we always signed it The Aardvark Appreciation Society. It amused us, it was pseudo-surreal, we hoped the owners were never offended and took it at face value as just 30-something silliness.
At some point not so long ago, one of our number heard said AAS mentioned on a show on Radio 4, something about visitors’ books and holiday homes…it has to have been us…of course, none of us had smart phones to create a painfully repetitive Vine clip of us signing, there were no tweeted updates, no updated Facebooks. Just memories…
Meanwhile, comedian Boothby Graffoe just mentioned Aardvarks on Twitter…got me wondering…did he stay in one of the same houses as us, did he sign the visitors’ book?