“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.” Dr Seuss
Visitors’ books – we love the raggedy copies we have. The smallest has travelled from home to home with us, occasionally lost for the length of a new home at the bottom of an unpacked packing box, but then found again in time for the next home. It has served us well, and now it has a new companion to take on the day to day duties.
This newcomer is filling up and growing a wisdom of its own, but it knows, and we know, that it will never be able to replicate the knowledge sheltered by its older companion. By ‘knowledge’ I suppose I mean gossip – a listing of relationships often detailed in little more than the word count of a tweet, but written long before that little blue bird, or its black X of a successor came to be. Some pages just have names and dates, but those alone can bring back a whole shelf of memories, especially if connected to the names and dates surrounding them. It’s even better if the visitors have taken the time to write a little more than just the basics, for then their own immediate impression of their time adds even more to the knowing that they were there.
So, if you’ve never had a visitors’ book, I recommend it. It needn’t be fancy, and it soon becomes a habit and then a treasure, the kind of treasure that will link many more than you will probably ever remember, or know, back to a place and a time.
Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023
The Phraser 
Great Georgie, and those words resonate with me. We have always kept a visitors’ book and it’s very important that every visitor fills it in! Our visitors’ books from our cottage in Nyanga are so special – as they describe visits there so beautifully and bring back many memories of fun times spent with family and friends.
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Yes, exactly that – sometimes you can almost hear the people who wrote the comments, and it’s fun just picking out the handwriting of those who are such a part of who we are.
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Such a beautiful idea!
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The pleasure they give does seem to go on and on
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I insisted on one when we acquired our little cottage in Cookham. I think that only once have I forgotten to press it upon our visitors, Otherwise it is de rigueur for people to write something just before they leave. if i present it early enough of if they already know the routine, then some of our guest have managed drawings and poems too, I love it. Even our children o it every tnie they visit.
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That sounds like a wonderful record. Sometimes they almost become history books for the next generations – hopefully full of the echoes of happy memories.
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Everyone laughed at me at first. But now it is a tradition. Even my husband, who is embarrassed every time I thrust the book and coloured pens into someone’s hands, then hastens to read what they’ve written after they’ve gone!
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I know what you mean about the embarrassment at first, but then it should be fun. We normally have trouble finding a pen!
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