Monday
August 30
After dinner
Airplane over Canada
Well, I'm here. On a plane. Flying to London to meet an old friend who has arranged for me to take part in something I'm sure I'll regret. But damn, the money is just too good to refuse, especially for someone who makes a (pitiful and never enough to cover the bills) living finding baby boomers' roots for them I'm taking Lui's advice and starting a new journal, which you know if you're reading this, because that means I survived this "social history experiment", one I suspect is going to be nothing so much as hell for me.
I am not a corset-wearing sort of person, despite my avid interest in history. And a duchess? Ha! I bet there's not one single duchess who had to max out her credit cards to prepay her bills for the next month. I will say that this Leon d'Aspry, television producers and former Hollywood play thing, is a very well organized sort of guy, I could tell. The rule book that Lui overnighted me is absolutely fascinating. I dug out a couple of Victorian etiquette books I bought on eBay (the researcher's best friend) and double checked a couple of the items that jumped out at me, but they were correct. Which is kind of scary, considering the sort of stuff this show wants me and the others to do.
Lui also enclosed a fact sheet about the show, which filled in some but not all the empty space he'd left in his explanation. It explained who Rin was (another person related distantly to American Old Money), but not what happened to her. I didn't want to tell Lui because his head is fat enough, but this was exactly the sort of thing I've always wanted to do. I love Victorian history, especially English Victorian History, and what dedicated Anglophile wouldn't jump at the chance to stay in a bona fide English stately home?
There is the corset issue, of course. But if I agree to do the job―I haven't signed anything yet, and won't until I talk more to Lui and his friend Leon―I'm sure I'll find a way around it. Then again, maybe Leon won't want to hire me once he sees me. Well if that's the case, I'll just hang around London for a couple of days, then go home. No problem. Nothing like a little vacation to brighten up a dull year, is there?
Oh, who am I kidding? I'll die of embarrassment if he turns me down. Why, why, why did I get on this plane? Why did I believe Lui? No corset in the world is going to hide all my fleshy bits! The whole idea is ridiculous! No one is going to want a fat duchess. GAH!
Monday
Still August 30
Even later after dinner
Airplane over. . . um. . . polar cap, I think
How mortifying. The flight attendant turned vicious when I politely requested they turn the plane around or at least drop me off somewhere before they land in London. I mean, how hard can it be to find an airport between here and England? It can't take up that much gas or time! I am a paying customer after all. Kind of. I didn't pay, the TV company did, but still, someone paid for my ticket and that's what really matters.
This doesn't bode well for the rest of the trip.
Monday―or maybe it's Tuesday now
August 30/31, depending on your time zone
Post-movie (Sleepless in Seattle)
Row 12, seat A, over Greenland, according to Bob the pilot
I can't believe the sort of bullies they hire as flight attendants nowadays. I know they've cracked down on security and everything, but this has nothing to do with the safety of the airplane, it's crew, or the passengers. Hilda Senshi, flight attendant henceforth known to one and all as Hilda the Hun, is on my list. I'm going to formally complain about her not only threatening to take away my frequent flyer miles (she can't do that, can she?), but also the fact that she snapped at me and pushed me back into my seat when all I did was ask about the possibility of parachuting out of the plane so I don't have to be humiliated when Leon, after bursting into hysterical laughter upon seeing me, suddenly starts chanting "Fat, fat, the water rat!" as he dances around me.
I don't even think she even asked Bob the pilot about dropping me off somewhere. I'm going to ask one of the other flight attendants, the ones who aren't Hun-like, if one of them will ask Bob for me. He sounds nice. I bet he will.
Monday, Tuesday, who knows
August whatever
Middle of the friggin' night
Airplane from hell
Hilda the Hun just leaned over the old lady next to me to tell me that if I bother one more flight attendant, she'll see I get off the plane. . . in the middle of the ocean, without a parachute.
Bitch is so going to get reported!
Tuesday (figured that out with the help of the guy sitting in front of me)
August 31
Early morning U.K. time/middle of the night Seattle time
Chained to my seat, plummeting earthward from thirty thousand feet if a certain flight attendant had her way
All right, so I've given up all hope of getting off the plane before reaching England's fabled shores. I'm coping with the fact that I'm in for nothing but disappointment, embarrassment, and the sharp pain of rejection once Leon sees me. I don't like it, but I'm coping, and that's gotta give me some sort of cosmic brownie points.
To distract myself from the horror that awaits me once Lui picks me up at Heathrow, I read a bit more of the rule book. the fist part basically covered the same stuff the fact sheet does:
A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF A VICTORIAN DUKE
(snappy title, huh?)
Presented to you by U.K. Alive! Britain's fastest growing television studio, this fascinating new series takes you into the lives of Victorians in a way that will startle and surprise you. Twenty-four volunteers from around Britain will join together to breathe new life into the stories of the wealth, glamour, and power that defined England's ruling class one hundred and twenty-five years ago.
Wealth, power, and glamour, huh? So far so good.
Historical Accuracy is a Must at U.K. Alive!
Filmed entirely at Worston Old Hall in Cheshire, one of the many (now extinct) Duke of Bridgewater's many estates, a modern-day descendant of the duke brings his family to re-create the life as it was for the landed gentry. How would you behave if you were suddenly whisked away from the stresses of everyday life and put down in a world where you had seemingly limitless power and wealth, a world where you only had to lift a finger to have any desire fulfilled? Tonio Edgerton, an architect from Bristol, will soon find out as he assumes the role of the fifteenth Duke of Bridgewater, newly wed to a charming (and rich) American heiress. The role of the new Duchess of Bridgewater is assumed by Rin Kagamine, a descendant of the famed American Astor family. Joining Mr. Edgerton are his real-life daughter, fifteen year-old Prima, his sister, Kumi Angel, and his brother-in-law, Sol Nichiion.
Oh, great. He's bringing his whole family. Sure, he'll have the comfort of everyone he loves around him, but what'll I have? I don't know why I'm worrying. I won't fit into the corset. They'll send me home after just one look. Damn my genes. This sounded like it would have been fun.
Downstairs is a Much Different World
But what if you weren't born with the proverbial silver spoon in your mouth? What if you were one of the 1.5 million people in service in September 1879? Would you be able to accept life dominated by the complicated hierarchy and rules servants had to follow, not to mention working without modern devices? We'll join sixteen volunteers who come to Worston Old Hall with no experience of what it means to be a servant. Only the cook and coachman have actual working knowledge of what it takes to fill their jobs. Join Kim Shou the butler and Demo Mane the housekeeper as they struggle with the responsibility of turning the nice lower servants from modern, twenty-first-century volunteers into a team who work with Victorian precision and efficiency.
I couldn't help but wonder if I would be on the plane at that moment if the job I had been offered was that of scullery maid. . . Well, that didn't take long to ponder. For ten thousand dollars, yes, I'd wash dishes for a month.
No Mobile Phones, No Toothpaste
(No toothpaste? GAH!)
For four weeks the entire household, from duke to scullery maid, will function just as houses of the nobility did in 1879. Each volunteer has foresworn modern machines and technology, agreeing instead to adhere steadfastly to Victorian standards of behavior, following with strict obedience the rules of manners of the time.
Okay, so that meant what? No smoking if you were a woman, chaperones for unmarried woman, couldn't mention anything remotely approaching, a sexual subject without couching it in terms so obtuse that no one really knew what you were talking about, smelling salts and fans, and. . . Oh, those poor people playing the servants! From what I could recall reading about the Victorians, they really had a hard time. Oi. Maybe it's a good thing they needed an American-descent Japanese woman to be the duchess. . . that's assuming I get the job, which I won't once Leon sees me.
Hmmm. . . Maybe if I slipped Bob the pilot a plaintive note and twenty bucks he'd stop in Ireland so I could sneak off?
Everyone in Their Places
and a Place for Everyone
Toughest of all rules for our brave volunteers downstairs will be the detailed and intricate hierarchy that governs the servants. How will our free-willed volunteers cope with being told who can speak and when, who must defer to whom, and how they must interact with the family above stairs? Most importantly, how will they deal with their loss of freedom?
If I do get the job (and I won't; I've sen the pictures of Consuelo Vanderbilt and all the other dollar duchesses―almost all of them were skinny little things), I'm going to be extra-special nice to the poor people downstairs.
Everyone in Worston Old Hall has a place set down for them by hundreds of years of societal norms and more―everyone from the duke in his smoking room to the third footman as he carries out the slops will keep to his place. Join us for four scintillating weeks as we examine how this group of modern-day freethinkers change into their Victorian counterparts. Will a Month in the Life of a Victorian Duke prove to be heaven. . . Or hell?
"Holy cow!"
The woman next to me, a nice elderly English lady who chatted very politely with me for the first twenty minutes of the trip then pulled out a book and left me alone for the duration, moved restlessly. Most of the passengers on the plane were asleep by this time, the lights dimmed, blankies and pillows having been handed out, but I had remained awake to read the packet of my info Lui had sent. I angled my reading lamp away from my seatmate so I wouldn't disturb her while I read, but I guess my exclamation must have been louder than I thought because she sat up and cast me a questionable glance.
I tilted toward her the eight-by-ten glassy that had been shuffled between consent forms.
"Is that your sweetheart?" she asked, making a little moue of appreciation at the photo.
I pursed my lips in a soundless whistle and shook my head. "Just a guy I might work with."
Lui was right; the man was absolutely gorgeous―black, black hair that waved back from a not-too-high forehead, startling light blue eyes that glittered from beneath his black eyebrows, a nice if slightly rueful smile, and a gently blunted chin that for some reason made my stomach flutter and my legs go weak. For a moment, I mulled over that reaction to a mere picture, then chalked it up to not having dated in the three years since Luki died. Lack of sex will sometimes make you a little swoony.
There was also a photo of a woman; blonde, pretty heart-shaped face, big bright blue eyes, and thin, thin, thin. In other words, as completely different from my pinkette, slightly freckled face, large self as she could be. It was Rin, the woman originally cast to play the part of wife to the drool-worthy duke, a woman who looked absolutely perfect for the part, a woman who would look even more perfect next to the black-haired Adonis. Seen together, it would be infinitely believable that the duke would have chosen her from all the women to be his wife, the woman to bear his children, mother to his daughter, friend, help-meet, lover. She was in a word, flawless.
I really want to go home. I only stayed in America for two weeks for pete's sake!
A/N:
I guess that I'll place the A/N's on the bottom of this story. Not sure why, but I felt like doing it like this. And how was the description of Tonio? ouo"