A new plan for running our house!

We’ve been watching Downton Abbey on PBS and now I know what’s wrong with our life.  WE HAVE NO SERVANTS! 

And I want some.  The idea of having someone obsessed with getting my hair right every day?  And oh, my heavens!  Having it be their job to make my bed and pick up after me? 

And my job would be to go to dinner every night and sleep until 10 and come down for a great breakfast someone else has made.  It sounds like Embassy Suites, my favorite hotel.  Of course, I’d have to sit down everyday with cook and plan dinner, but I love sitting down and planning things.  And I’d have someone to drive me around all the time.  Doesn’t that sound relaxing? 

Our servants would be smart, nice people like the Downton Abbey servants, and they would love working for me and want my family and me to be happy and have our house look great all the time. 

You have to admit, this has its appeal.  I wouldn’t want to be cursed with a social conscience during all this and start to feel like they should sleep in the guest room when they have the flu, but I wouldn’t mind sending one special boy, perhaps the son of our widowed cook, to a good school because he was brilliant and have him come back and marry my daughter. 

As long as he was really handsome, don’t you know. 

I also want one of those low, calm voices the upper class women all have in these shows.  And be terribly brave when there was really no danger because the chauffer would throw himself in front of a speeding car for me. 

I’d also like to be able to consider everything that doesn’t affect me as unimportant detail.  Like last night, one of the characters was missing from his World War I regiment and everybody kept saying he was going to be fine except for the ditsy cook’s helper.  “Don’t worry, Daisy, there could be a hundred others reasons the war office has declared him missing in action in the first modern war of our age when thousands of soldiers were left dying on the battle field.” And sure enough, he showed up during a concert they were giving for wounded soldiers at the Abbey, which has been turned over to the Army to be used as a convalescent home. 

But then a couple of weeks ago, a substitute butler, who was suffering from PTSD, dropped some gravy on milady’s yellow chiffon and you would have thought they’d cancelled the monarchy.  It’s a completely warped sense of values, but you know, kind of enviable. 

I think I’d have to call a halt at being called “Milady” all the time.  That would be where the fiction ended for me.  I’d have to say, “For heavens sake, call me Liz” at some point. 

Then they would look shyly at me and say, “Well, all right,…Liz,” kind of tentatively.  And then they would go right on doing my hair and making my bed and driving me around and cooking for me because they think I’m fabulous. 

And then I’d wake up.