Kate of Late

I just know I’m doomed to play earnest, big-eared Daisy

A San Francisco-based “handcrafted travel” company invites you to “step into the world of Downton Abbey.”

Its eight-day vacation offers private tours of Highclere Castle, which impersonates the Yorkshire home of the fictional Crawley family in the popular British TV series. There’s an optional side-trip to Inveraray Castle in Scotland, which stands in for Duneagle, the home of Lady Rose MacClare. An additional excursion allows you to glimpse “the upstairs, downstairs” workings of another mansion, Shugborough Hall.

But aren’t these posh dawdles missing the point?

If you’re a real fan of Downton Abbey’s stylish trip down memory lane, you ought to experience it as its characters’ real-life counterparts would have done in the 1920s. You should be randomly selected to be either a hardworking domestic, or the master of your domain.

In this set-up, your own desires would be of no consequence. Sure, you’d prefer to waft about like beautiful Lady Mary rather than scuttle around like homely Miss O’Brien, but Fate will decide for you whether you’re an upstairs swan or a downstairs cockroach.

Do you have an attitude of servitude? Sign up and find out.

Here’s how it ought to go. You fork out your money for a proper Downton Abbey experience. When you arrive at the airport, you’ll find out which character you’ll get to be for the next while. Accordingly, you’ll then scrunch yourself up with four others in an economy bathroom for the entire flight, or sprawl in first class with champagne on demand.

Most of you will find you’re valets, maids, cooks, footmen, or butlers, because they, of course, vastly outnumber the five madly idle members of the Crawley family. As servants, you can look forward to backbreaking labour; low wages; no privacy; no freedom -- of expression, or anything else; no friends, sexual partners, or children; and a day off every fortnight or two.

One lucky traveller in your party gets to be the Earl of Grantham, who decides things, derides things, and strides about, pouting, whenever his dictums are ignored. Another embodies the Countess of Grantham, who, with no discernible personality of her own, kowtows to her husband and simpers at everyone else.

A third vacationer gets to be the Dowager Countess, an expert at withering remarks and antediluvian viewpoints. For you, Dowager, even life at the top of the heap is a disappointing business, but one must soldier on being as useless as possible.

Three of you will be the Crawley daughters, who have nothing to do all day but get dressed -- with assistance -- and pick at your food so you can fit into tomorrow’s outfit. Happily, there’s no bathing suit competition.

It would be helpful to have PMS if you are picked to play Lady Mary Crawley, whose perpetual irritability suggests that she could use at least two dozen more Turkish lovers – of course, who couldn’t?

If you are chosen to be Lady Edith, you poor soul, be sure to carry powerful binoculars. You’ll have no worth until you bag an Earl-approved mate.

Sadly, one of you will have to be mild-mannered Matthew Crawley. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. I’ll say no more.

If you are, instead, one of the staff, maybe you’ll be driver Tom Branson. Though you’ll be elevated into better clothing by marrying Sybil Crawley, you’ll be ridiculed upstairs as a lowly Papist Irishman and downstairs as a conniving social climber. Don’t be surprised if somebody slips cold boiled potatoes under your coverlet!

As for you, Mrs. Patmore, why are you wasting time here, pretending you know how to read? Get about your business making three multi-course meals a day as well as tea and elevenses for a houseful of imperious masters and mistresses, plus staff. If you’ve got complaints, take them out on scullery maid Daisy – that’s what she’s there for.

Ah, Mr. Barrow, it’s too bad about your disgusting proclivities. You may have been born that way, just as you were born into service, but, unlike the job of helping fatheads into dinner jackets, in this particular era you can feel no pride over preferring men to ladies. Just keep your legs crossed and Lord Grantham’s cravat pressed until death do you part.

Miss O’Brien, you have our sympathy. As a mean-spirited spinster with no creative outlet beyond the tedious mending of Lady Grantham’s gowns, you understandably keep stirring up trouble for others. You rise every day at 5 a.m. and retire well after the Countess, who can’t even brush her own hair. Spit spot -- about 500 strokes a night should do it. Make sure not to trouble her with any of your own petty concerns. Who cares, O’Brien?

Friends, you’ll have no photographic evidence of your vacation, just spiritual bruises. But if you long to revisit an idiotic way of life that most civilized people have mercifully left behind, by all means, step into the world of Downton Abbey.

 

 

Pick your finish, live within it

WHAT does your door knob say about you?

That’s what an e-mailed news release from a lock manufacturer asked me last week. It gave me pause. It doesn’t take much to give me pause.

“Your home’s entrance can tell a lot about your personality,” the release explains. That is disturbing. Like you, I’ve heard the rumour that your door knob only gets one chance to make a first impression, but I’d dismissed it as mere propaganda put out by the home makeover industrial complex.

Perhaps I was in denial. The entrance to my own family’s house has always looked like the path to a den for wayward pack rats. And since teenagers are constantly barging in and out, our front door might not even have a door knob any more. If so, I’d never noticed.

I’m pretty oblivious to most things these days. Just last week a pharmacist pointed to a phone number on my prescription and asked if it were mine. “I’ve never seen it before,” I asserted, somewhat accusingly. How incompetent could she be? Then, after about 45 seconds, I said, “Ahem… actually, that probably is my number. It certainly rings a bell.”

I didn’t bother explaining that it had been a long time since anybody had asked for my number, for obvious and depressing reasons.

But back to door knobs. Apparently they are constantly, if silently, sending out signals about one’s character. The news release says that if I find door knob shopping a daunting challenge -- and I admit, I do –- it’s because I unwittingly crave a knob that fits my personality.

If, for example, I am drawn to a Venetian Bronze finish, it means I am probably a conservative classical music enthusiast who enjoys “trips to Rome.”

Am I wrong in thinking that this is a slap in the face to Venice? It clearly implies that yes, Venice is fine if all you’re doing is finishing your door knob, but if you’re going to vacation in Italy, you’d better choose Rome. Is that not hurtful? Well, don’t blame me. I don’t make the rules.

The news release goes on to say that if my door knob has a Satin Stainless Steel finish, I probably love sushi, groove on “indie rock,” and am so flagrantly avant-garde in my thinking that I wear “jeans with a t-shirt.” Satin Stainless Steel people like things “clean” and “modern.”

That really threw me for a loop. Sure, I enjoy clean things, but getting them clean bores me into mulch. That isn’t in keeping with the simple, bright Satin Stainless Steel door knob finish mentality, where polishing your knob probably takes the better part of most weekends.

Where were we? Yes, door knobs. The next style option on the news release is called Rustic Pewter. If that were my door knob style, I’d apparently be the sort who’d turn down a Satin Stainless Steel door knob-worthy “modern mansion” for an “average suburban house.” Such a person, the release says evenly, would probably “work too much”  -- or would claim to; I’m just throwing that out there. Rustic Pewter door knob Man and Lady are the kind of people who eat cheeseburgers and go camping.

I get the message. If I go for the Rustic Pewter finish, I might as well sink my life savings into a giant TV because my fatal cardiac arrest will be arriving shortly, likely during an episode of Hillbilly Handfishin.’

It also seems wise to reconsider the Rustic Pewter finish swimsuit I’ve been planning to order online from Canadian Tire. I don’t have the figure for it, or the appropriate screwdriver.

Luckily, I wasn’t yet out of options. An Iron Black door knob finish, I learned, is dignified and impressive “without being showy.” It hints that I like “emo” music. By the way, “emo” is not the same as ELO (Electric Light Orchestra); if you thought it was, you must be one of those Rustic Pewter morons.

Iron Black door knob nuts also like “visiting Eastern bloc countries,” wearing all-black clothes, and eating at “ethnic restaurants,” by which I doubt the news release  means Chinese-Canadian. Think: goulash.

I now have the hang of door knob finish interpretation. I am able to extrapolate that the consummate Iron Black door knob fancier eats sardines whole, drinks beer that tastes like Kevin Bieksa’s stewed hockey socks, and worships Satan.

The news release ends with the final finish in the door knob pantheon, “Bright Brass,” which represents happiness, imagination and “a great sense of humour.” By that point, I didn’t need to be told it’s the choice of self-respecting grandmothers and leprechauns everywhere. I already knew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presenting ... 'Richard Unearthed'

EXPERTS from the University of Leicester have identified a skeleton found underneath a parking lot as that of King Richard Plantagenet, depicted as a scheming child-killer by William Shakespeare in his 1592 play, The Tragedy of Richard the Third.

In related news, the anxious skeleton of William Shakespeare has been found behind the dumpster at a Highgate Tesco. “I totally don’t want that guy coming after me,” said the playwright’s bones. “This calls for a rewrite.”

Richard Unearthed

A New Play by the Late William Shakespeare

ACT 1. SCENE 1.

Enter RICHARD THE THIRD’S SKELETON, solo.

Rich.: Now is the winter of my dis’nterment,

 From underneath this foul Leicester car park 

With all the insults level’d at my name

Rais’d alongside my cold and rotten bones.

They call’d me murderer, and, worse, ‘deform’d,’

‘Rudely stamp’d,’ ‘cheated of feature,’ so plain

That rank mongrels were wont to bark at me

And ripe nymphs hurl themselves off battlements.

Henry Tudor made sure my reign was brief.

I was the last king to die for England

My bravery and goodness fully lost

To history. Thanks, Shakespeare’s poison pen!

RICHARD’S SKELETON sobs like a pre-schooler denied a stick of gum.

Enter WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S SKELETON, bowing clumsily.

Shak.: Your grace, have you need of damage control?

Rich.: (sniffling) You! Have you not tormented me enough?

Without your ‘tragedy’ the world might know

I did good works. I danced full out at balls

And was gentle on my delicate whites.

I was the ultimate Plantagenet!

Shak.: (cringes) My Lord, t’was just my need for villainy!

A ‘tragedy’ was requested – and you fit.

Rich.: Lucky for you these couplets do not rhyme.

Otherwise, I would call you a piece of …

Shak.: (hastily) How’d you like a gig on Oprah, my lord?

A two- or three-hour special Thursday night?

You’d get a chance to lay out all your claims

Put the lie to centuries of untruths.

Rich.: Hmmm….

Shak.: (wheedling) You’d crush Lance Armstrong’s ratings in hour one!

Rich.: (considering) Could we tell her ‘The Tower’s out of bounds?

Not to mention the princes and their fates?’

Shak.: (reconsidering) P’raps you’d be better off on Jay Leno.

His questions are as soft as a sponge cake.

Rich.: (worried) Is this bold new world best not attempted?

What think you, o most Bardly bag of bones?

Shak.: My lord, this world is one made just for you

A place where fame and brashness rule the roost

Virtue and modesty no longer count

Shady vulgarians get the last laugh.

(as an aside) ‘Winning!’ 

’Tis why I choose to switch careers, my lord.

Why waste my gift on poetry and plays

When P.R will so deftly pay my bills?

My first client: the outcast, Richard Three.

Rich.: So you propose to manage me, sirrah?

To make a new persona from my dust?

You’ll throw out all my sins like so much trash

And delete my reputed lust for pow’r?

Shak.: (bridling) Do you think me unequal to the task?

I’m only the most famous in my field

A symbol of the power of the pen

I’ve turn’d a teen love story into gold!

I’m quoted round the world in ev’ry hour

But by all means, choose Edelman New York.

SHAKESPEARE’S SKELETON exits in a snit.

Rich.: (musing) Shakespeare has never been my biggest fan

Why would he suddenly give me the eye?

Mayhaps he thinks I am his catapult

To riches and a night with Beyonce!

Yet I do need public relations help

Unless I crave cremation in a trice.

Lance Armstrong still lives large in Hawaii --

I could do worse than a mea culpa.

But Leno? How sad. Better Letterman.

He’ll skirt the little princes’ vaunted deaths

And joke ‘You’re not THAT ugly, ha ha ha.’

I’d much prefer that to Oprah’s grim stare. 

(Shouts) Shakespeare!

SHAKESPEARE’S SKELETON lopes in, dribbling a basketball.

Shak.: Yo! What up?

Rich.: Good grief! And you want to be in P.R.?

Shak.: Black culture’s where it’s at, my homely bro!

Rich.: How d’you know? You’ve been dead 400 years.

Shak.: I say Oprah’s your best re-branding bet.

Letterman’s for the old, and the uncool.

Oprah’ll win you favour with the ladies.

That’s never a bad move -- ask any king.

Rich.: (acidly) Won’t she be too accusatory?

Won’t she urge me to be my ‘bestest’ self?

Shak.: Sure. You can agree and then shake it off.

There’s no requirement to follow through.

You will have to watch out for TMZ

They’ll dog your bone-prints everywhere you go.

They’re cockroaches – what can you do, my lord?

Rich.: D’you promise me a pool, a car, a wench?

I’ve done without since 1485.

Not much use my now being disinter’d

If life’s as tedious as a car-park.

Shak.: Yeah, yeah, King R., you’ll get all the best perks.

Impress Oprah and the world’s thine oyster.

I’ll get right on it, you can rest assured.

(cunning) And now there’s the small matter of my fee….

Rich.: (alarmed) A hearse! A hearse! My kingdom for a hearse!

RICHARD’S SKELETON rides off with SHAKESPEARE’S SKELETON in hot pursuit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proof positive that you aren’t the strangest person in the world

PRAISE the Lord and pass the wingnuts. The year 2013 has dawned and human beings are as ill-advised as ever, if not more so.

What else accounts for the fact that an English artist thought it was a grand idea to lay out sheets of manuscript in Liverpool parks so birds could compose a score there with their droppings?

I listened to an online excerpt of the 20-minute composition Bird Sheet Music – A Movement in Three Parts, which had its premiere at the Tate Liverpool art gallery. I regret to inform you here that bird turds are tone-deaf. Despite the best efforts of sound artist Helmut Lemke to incorporate birdsong and ambient noise, and an allegedly faithful rendition of the score by a professional orchestra, The Beatles clearly have nothing to fear from their fine-feathered fellow Liverpudlians. Incidentally, The Bird Sheet “art intervention” was intended to draw attention to, er, waste.

British artists currently seem obsessed with bird scat. According to GeoBeatsNews online, one art studio calling itself Cohen Van Balen has created bacteria for a project called Pigeon d’Or that modifies pigeons’ metabolisms and allows them to defecate window soap. Talk about cleaning as you go!

Much more accessible British potty humour comes compliments of one Jennifer Barkness, a 64-year-old former typist for the Adults, Health and Housing department of the Derby City Council. The back story: Barkness asked her employer to make her redundant, according to the Mail Online. The Derby City Council apparently refused her request and asked her instead to take over the work of two other employees who had been “allowed to leave.” In a huff, Barkness resigned.

She was not content to go gentle into that good night.  Before departing, Barkness set up an out-of office computer reply that said “No longer work for the council. P*** off the lot of you.” She then sent out a group e-mail that referred to one former co-worker as “a lump of canine excrement.”

One only hopes that Barkness doesn’t dream of a future career in the diplomatic corps.

I love The Mail Online, which continues to faithfully report all the news that isn’t fit for real newspapers. Its story last week describing Victoria Beckham buying take-out fish’n’chips with her son Cruz, for instance, contained nine pictures of the “event,” far fewer than those illustrating a story alleging that famine-ravaged parents in North Korea were eating their children.

Not all the loonies are based in Great Britain – or North Korea -- though. According to the online newspaper Orange.co.uk, European snowboarders have started taking nude photos of themselves on mountain peaks – thanks for that, global warming -- and posting them on Facebook. The paper also states that China’s national pole dancing team is taking its talents to the snowy streets in an effort to win respect. One “spectator” commended their resolve, noting, “Those poles must be freezing in this weather.”

Even the ordinarily no-nonsense Dutch occasionally lose their wits. Amsterdam’s Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, for instance, is capitalizing on its inadequacies by advertising itself as one of the world’s worst hostelries.

“The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel has been proudly disappointing travelers for forty years,” its current website boasts. Comparing its charms to those of a minimum-security prison, it itemizes such treats as “thin mattresses,” “rooms without views,” and “Amusing witticisms and speculations about former guests’ sexual preferences scrawled on most surfaces.”

Those wishing to stay at the hotel “do so at their own risk and will not hold (it) liable for food poisoning, mental breakdowns, terminal illness, lost limbs, radiation poisoning, certain diseases associated with the 18th century, plague, etcetera,” the website blithely continues.

In its guest comments section, “Lisa from Oklahoma” writes “What is that smell? I demand to know what that smell is,” while “Charlotte from Texas” remarks “What can I say? It was cheap. But not that cheap. I mean, a bus shelter offers the same facilities.”

Meanwhile, back in Japan, one of its national newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun, claims that developer Shota Ishiwatari is creating, for human use, a “wearable tail attached to a belt containing heart-rate sensors.” When the heart rate of the person wearing the “Tailly” increases, the tail wags with the enthusiasm of, say, a Labrador let off its leash by a creek on a summer’s day.

The Tailly doesn’t just allow you to be more dog-like, but acts as an “extension” of your body. It could be, for example, “a way to express your true feelings on a date.”

I think that would have to be a first date, since wearing a tail will absolutely guarantee that you won’t get a second. I’m just sayin.’

Of course, due to the lack of an Accuracy Police Force on the free-for-all that is the Internet, none of this compendium of “facts” may actually be true. You gets what you pays for.