A handful more quadrupeds have left us – they included “Chum” in the draft, but she couldn’t bear parting with me, and turned up again with all her colossal charms.
The Opera tonight was a comic one called “The Hermit’s Bell” (Das Glockchen des Eremiten) by one Von Maillart, amusing enough as elucidated by the English sketch, and containing a few good things. It was followed by a remarkably good ballet – Sommernachtspuk – in which, after a graceful dance by powered and crinolined ladies and appropriate “gents”, and the romantic elopement of a fayre damsel (taking at least 10 minutes) some wonderfully posed statuary comes to life and dances a variety of themes on the lawn deserted by humans. An old boozed butler wakes up during their prank, and they rush back to their pedestals, but haven’t time to resume their proper poses, whereat he fears that he has “got em”. The accompanying music was very attractive and dainty.
My supper – a roasted rissole, hunks of “tinned duff”, and an “anzac wafter” – necessitates my remaining out of bed awhile to scrawl these lonesome lucubrations.
Spanish influenza is showing in Cologne, but I smoke too much to catch anything. It (smoking) deadens the intellect, but massacres microbes.
Walk March 