Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Le Levée Iain

Louis XIV of France spent half the morning getting out of bed. Someone woke him up, someone else kissed him good morning, two people pulled off his nightshirt and a variety of folks took care of tasks as mundane as removing the chamber pot.

Compared to Louis, Iain's got it easy. Generally, only two members of the staff serve him, and visitors only rarely participate in the morning, bedtime, or bathtime rituals.

But The Grumpy Groom's comment regarding bathtime ("Bath time makes me grumpy too. And I'm going on 40! :)") does make one consider Iain's lack of privacy. After all, I suspect that his groomliness gets to take his baths alone. Perhaps even to dress himself. He stays up late, I bet, and picks out his own jammies.

These are all pleasures denied to Iain. Instead, he's subjected to being picked up, wiped off, inspected and groomed, washed, dried and brushed, dressed, undressed, re-dressed and fussed over. We even discard his own, 21st century, chamberpot (made by Huggies, of course).

So maybe his recent rejection of bathtime stems from a desire to be more like Greta Garbo. If so, he's sadly out of luck.

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