to a cinema later on because I knew the plots, the names of the stars, and the opinions of the reviews all by heart.
If ever I come sailing in with a new hair style, they all look disapprovingly at me, and I can be quite sure that someone will ask which glamorous star I’m supposed to be imitating. They only half believe me if I reply that it's my own invention.
But to continue about the hair style—it doesn’t stay put for more than half an hour, then I’m so tired of the remarks people pass that I quickly hasten to the bathroom and restore my ordinary housegarden-kitchen hair style.
Yours, Anne
Friday, 28 January, 1944
Dear Kitty, I asked myself this morning whether you don’t sometimes feel rather like a cow who has had to chew over all the old pieces of news again and again, and who finally yawns loudly and silently wishes that Anne would occasionally dig up something new.
Alas, I know it’s dull for you, but try to put yourself in my place, and imagine how sick I am of the old cows who keep having to be pulled out of the ditch again. If the conversation at mealtimes isn’t over politics or a delicious meal, then Mummy or Mrs. van Daan trot out one of the old stories of their youth, which we’ve heard so many times before or Dussel twaddles on about his wife’s extensive wardrobe, beautiful race horses, leaking rowboats, boys who can swim at the age of four, muscular pains and nervous patients. What it all boils down to is this—that if one of the eight of us opens his mouth, the other seven can finish the story for him!
We all know the point of every joke from the start, and the storyteller is
alone in laughing at his witticisms. The various milkmen, grocers and butchers of the two ex-housewives have already grown beards in our minds, so often have they been praised to the skies or pulled to pieces, it is impossible for anything in the conversation here to be fresh or new.
Still, all this would be bearable if the grown-ups didn’t have their little way of telling stories we have already heard from Kleiman, Jan, or Miep ten times over and adding their own little frills and furbelows, so that I often have to pinch my arm under the table to prevent myself from putting them right. Little children such as Anne must never, under any circumstances, know better than the grown-ups, however many blunders they make, and to whatever extent they allow their imaginations to run away with them.
One favourite subject of Kleiman and Jans is that of people in hiding and the underground movement. They know very well that anything to do with other people in hiding interests us tremendously, and how deeply we can sympathise with the sufferings of people who get taken away, and rejoice with the liberated prisoner.
We are quite as used to the idea of going into hiding, or 'underground,' as in bygone days one was used to Daddy’s bedroom slippers warming in front of the fire.
There are a great number of organisations, such as 'The Free Netherlands' which forge identity cards, supply money to people 'underground,' find hiding places for people, and work for young men in hiding, and it is amazing how much noble, unselfish work these people are doing, risking their own lives to help and save others. Our helpers are a very good example. They have pulled us through until now and we hope they will bring us safely to dry land. Otherwise, they will have to share the same fate as the many others who are being searched for. Never have we heard one word of the burden which we certainly must be to them, never has one of them complained of all the trouble we give.
They all come upstairs every day, talk to the men about business and politics, to the women about food and wartime difficulties, and about newspapers and books with the children. They put on the brightest possible faces, bring flowers and presents for birthdays and bank holidays, are
