Below, you will find a copy of a document that currently has the historical world in stitches of excitement.  Found recently inside an old feather mattress that was part of the Sovereign Suite in the popular Hotel Royal in Dresden (where, famously, “your command is our hospitality – we employ discretion so you don’t have to”, which was an ever so popular dictum until the Hotel burnt down in a fit of taxes and insurance greed last month), this is an excerpt from Mrs Herman Goering’s most personal diary.  Locked with a safety pin and wrapped copiously in soiled dishcloths, it took the lads down at Dresden Constabulary a good hour to extract it from the charred remains of the private chronicle, which relates events between the dates of 16 October 1933 and 15 April 1935.  As you can see, this is one of the later entries, but is perhaps the best representation of the true joie de vivre that enveloped the journal.

 

                                                                       

 

                                                                                                                       

1 April 1935

 

Dear Most Dearest Diary,

 

             A most strange event occurred to me today.  I can’t quite get it out of my head but I must leave it to the end, as there are other things that I must attend to first.  Today, as you will no doubt know already, was washing day.  However, events conspired against me so that I was not able to iron Herman’s long underwear or his braces.  I suppose I should have got my priorities straight and not tried to bury the canary first, but we’re going on holiday tomorrow to some Cold-itchy place or other in Poland tomorrow, and I didn’t want to return to a festering pigeon, you know.  The canary’s name is Clarence – I always say that if dear Herman was English, his name would be Clarence, but then he always tells me not to be crude and profane in his presence.  I don’t have a clue what he means, but if he’s going to insult me in such a manner then obviously he doesn’t love me anymore – and I tell him that!  He then gets rather annoyed, citing some incomprehensible reference to female intelligence, but ALWAYS promises to help with the gardening on Sunday evening.  He’s a good boy, really…. 

 

Well, anyway – Clarence wasn’t actually dead, but he certainly was a not-very-well-at-all canary, and he wasn’t speaking properly.  That’s always a certain sign of a mortal illness in a canary, not speaking properly, and I knew that he would be stiff dead and chorusing in the choir invisible in a minute, so I decided to bury him.  Herman wasn’t convinced, but as soon as I told him that Clarence was a Jewish canary he had the pistol on him.  I’m not sure that Clarence is in fact a ruddy Jew, but he’s awfully stingy with his feed, and we bought him from the banker, who wasn’t a Jew, but his manager was.  The funeral took six hours - from 9 am, just after breakfast, where Herman and I had conversed joyfully over some turgid scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes that had somehow managed to turn grey while cooking, up to tea time when we didn’t have anything at all.  Clarence was being particularly stubborn – I couldn’t understand it!  It made perfect sense for him to be buried then!  I explained it to him, I said ‘we’re going on holiday’ and then specifically emphasized ‘tomorrow’ but he just carried on, struggling and hollering his pretty little head off until I decided that I would have to bury him inside his cage.  I was most loathe to do this as the cage was a present from dear cousin Hector, who has a raging bull ranch in Spain where he teaches cute little furry cows to charge cherry-coloured tablecloths for fun!  I ask you, how can men think of such things?!  Hector is a dear friend, though, and the cage was ever so beautiful, what with its porcelain water dish and gold-rimmed cat-flap.  But it had to be done, as Clarence’s voice got hoarser and hoarser, and I was sure that he was going to be full of chomping worms in a minute, and I didn’t want to see that.  Unfortunately, at that very moment, Clarence made a dash for the cat-flap (what that thing was for, I’ll never know) and escaped without so much as a squawk goodbye!  I screeched Well I never! – I did – and it was all over.  I didn’t even have a chance to give him his last rites as a proper Catholic canary should have (I didn’t think to give him Jewish rites – maybe that was what made him fly away!  I am forever sticking my foot in it, aren’t I!) and then he was off!  I still can’t believe it – all that freshly squeezed orange juice and luxury sparrow feed I gave him for elevenses and dinner!  And all for nothing!  He’s going to die – he’s probably already dead – in some secluded corner of the back streets, flapping his wings in one last exertion of life.  And unburied!  I wonder if he could dig himself a grave with those vicious claws of his…If he was tremendously unlucky – oh, he couldn’t! he wouldn’t! – he might have been caught by one of those nasty uneducated Gypsies and tortured to death!  Oh! I mustn’t think of such things.  Herman is always telling me off for thinking impure thoughts and having corrupt dreams like ‘Mien Fuhrer’s dad was a Jew’ and ‘England will some day win the World Cup!’  Anyway, I decided to bury the cage on its own, as I had dug the hole and I didn’t want to waste a perfectly good hole.  I told Herman that Clarence had been well and truly done away with, and he was very happy. 

 

Until next time, my cherished foolscap…