The Dairy of Mr Frank Anne:

By Desmond Gin-Sodden

Frank Anne in front of a Front Door

Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the freedom of Mr Frank Anne in 1981. 

Frank Anne was the first of his kind in the 1930s as a New Age Dairy Consultant. Not withstanding the fact that nobody had even heard of the expression 'New Age' at that time, Frank Anne proceeded to establish his own dairy in Bedrijventerrein an almost unpronounceable district of Amsterdam. 

The dairy met with mixed results partly because nobody knew what a New Age dairy did, partly because only six people on the planet were able to pronounce 'Bedrijventerrein,' partly because he was an idiot but predominantly because he had neglected to install a front door to his dairy leaving customers to shin up the wall and in via the back window.

On the 17th November 1939 Frank Anne went on the run from the local Jewish community after mistaking a Mrs Hilda Van Goldstein of 74 Hoogstraaten Weg, Utrecht  for an escaped cow. He was particularly peeved by this as it had happened during his 35th birthday luncheon. 



Attempts were made to reconcile the two parties but Frank Anne refused to apologise and took refuge in a secret annex in the nearest available reddish building as red was his favourite colour. Frank Anne was brought food, water, clothing and an early prototype scalextric racing car game by some trusted friends until such a time that the entire matter could be forgotten about. 

Unbeknownst to him and those helping him the secret annex he was hiding in was in fact the exact same one that was to be later used by the now famous Anne Frank and her family. Even worse still this was the same family of whose grandmother, Mrs Hilda Van Goldstein, Frank Anne had mistaken for an escaped cow. 

However, luckily for Frank Anne the secret annex he had been hiding in also had a secret annex and it was there that he hid whilst Anne Frank and the rest of her family were also hiding. Here he was sent food, water, clothing and a later prototype scalextric racing care game by some friends pretending to be on the run from the puppet Nazi Government whilst acting as suppliers to Anne Frank and her family. 

Regrettably for Frank Anne his incarceration did not finish with the liberation of Holland in 1944. He actually remained in the secret annex of the secret annex for another 37 years until  October 27th 1981 at the age of 78. The reasons for this are numerous but significantly, the people who had been supplying him had not been told of his reasons for hiding. They had just assumed that he was a mad-yet-simultaneously-very-happy-man hiding in a small cupboard-sized room in a reddish brick building.

Frank Anne passed away in 1983 leaving his dairy still without a front door.