Status Updates From Die Ungetrösteten

'Your parents? Good gracious, you shouldn't worry about them.'

In other words, it was my duty to perform on this evening at least to my usual standards. To do anything less - I suddenly sensed this strongly - would be to open some strange door through which I would hurtle into a dark, unknown space.

'How can you remember that? You said yourself you were no more than a child at the time.'
'What I'm reporting is how everyone here remembers it.'