Jurassic Jeeves and the Mâcon Delta
I set the alarm on my laptop to gently awaken me, at 5am on December 23rd, with Ry Cooder's African Dream. I vowed to close the laptop by 9pm on December 22nd, in order to get enough sleep so that 5am wouldn't arrive like an unwanted telegram. I had a train to catch by 6:40 and didn't want to miss it.I lay there in the dark, staring into the void. My body wanted to sleep but my mind wouldn't agree. It was time to re-open my laptop and turn to Bertie Wooster for solace and sleep.
Between him and his manservant Jeeves, solving yet another crisis of the idle rich, I knew that they would eventually arrive at the proverbial happy ending. Not the happy ending offered with a Thai oil massage (very popular with American middle-aged men in Chiang Mai), mind you, but the wholesome kind, where young aristocratic British men escape marriage to overly-pushy women and great aunt Agatha decides to put said young man back in her will. It's Jeeves, the valet, who is the learned one in these stories, while the public-schooled Sons-of-a-Viscount are foppish, well-dressed dandies with less than one brain cell shared between them.
Stories like these wouldn't be successful if there wasn't some truth beneath the comedy. I dare say that if Jeeves were running the world, we'd all be in a better place. I used to, and still do, think the same for the secretaries of the world. While their bosses hobnob with clients and abuse the company credit card, it's the secretary who gets all the work done. That's why I support an Ernestine/Jeeves 2012 American presidential ticket. Ernestine can be the public face for the duo and dismiss her critics with "We're the American government. We don't care, we don't have to." (Hey, American exceptionalism, completely misunderstood by Republicans, nervertheless works brilliantly as a battle call for their incredibly less informed base). Meanwhile, Jeeves can ingeniously bring peace to the Middle East and bring North Korea to its knees just like he blithely downed the dictator Lord Sidcup (leader of the fascist group The Black Shorts - named thusly because at the time, other fascist groups had taken all the shirts) by simply saying the one word "Eulalie". I'll leave it to you to look that one up. It's Christmas, by gum. What the fuck else do you have to do?
So, by midnight or perhaps 1am, I not only had watched three Jeeves & Wooster episodes, but also magically developed this new British writing style. Thusly, foppish and all that rot. What what? Right oh! And 5am came upon me like a wild elephant, no matter how gently Cooder's African Queen tiptoed upon my brain. If I only had a manservant like Jeeves to draw my bath and pack my bags and then carry them to the train station for me. But, I don't know where I'd put the poor chap. And I don't have a bathtub.
Unmanservanted, I dragged myself out of bed. I wedged myself into my shower and managed to wash my hair without bruising my elbows on the faucet handles and I even shaved my legs, which is quite a feat, since bending over in my shower is impossible (why, you might ask, would I shave when I will not be getting naked in front of anyone? I don't know, I might answer, perhaps because it's Christmas and I might get lucky with Santa?).
I had packed my bag the night before and laid out my traveling clothes in a big crunchy pile on the floor in front of the bathroom. I dressed, blew my hair to a smoking pulp, put on my Jon Stewart Rally For Sanity hat and two layers of coat and gloves
The train station was surprisingly alive with people, but I found my train easily and felt lucky to find a place for my bags in the luggage rack. I could sit in my seat and feel superior as the Bad Late People had to shove their bags into every available crevice... thus permanently burying my bags and crushing those delicate chocolate eggs, whose price included a donation to disadvantaged children. If those Bad Late People, a.k.a. luggage thugs, knew about the origin of those eggs, I bet they would not have been such insensitive beasts. Or, I think I would be better off if I become a Bad Late Person. At least my luggage would have been on top when I had to get off the train in Dijon. The Bad Late People all stared at me with blank faces as I threw their ten-ton valises into the aisle, desperately digging for my underprivileged eggs.
At Dijon, I waited for my connecting train that would take me to Mâcon, where my friend Helen (formerly of Troy) would pick me up and whisk me off to her Bergundian manor where I would be spending Christmas and New Years with her and her husband, Faustus.
OK, those aren't their real names. And their relationship isn't that tragic. At least, as far as I know.
The train trip was peaceful. I watched the sun break over the hills and the mist rise from the wet, green fields. 
Snow clouds hung low and threatening...
...and leafless trees stood as sentries, reminding the earth and all its inhabitants that they will bloom again in the spring. After arriving in Mâcon, Helen showed me around Faustus' family home. It had been in the family for hundreds of years and still contained many beautiful pieces of furniture, including Faustus' great grandmother's sleigh bed, now used as a couch in the living room. Standing in front of a crackling fire, I admired a giant armoire in the corner of the room.
Helen said, "Yes, that's our Jurassic armoire."
I said (channeling Bertie Wooster), "It's pretty damn big, all right."
If Jeeves had been the room, he would have discretely mumbled, "I believe what Madame Troy means, Madame, is that this family heirloom originates from the nearby mountain range of Jura, which essentially covers the region of Franche-Comté, stretching south to the region of Rhône-Alpes east of the department of Ain, where the range reaches its peak at Le Crêt de la Neige. The southern end of the French Jura is in the northwest of the department of Savoie. The north end is in the very south of Alsace. It is because of this provenance of the armoire that it would be considered Jurassic and is not at all related, Madame, to the 1993 American movie Jurassic Park, wherein, as I imagine Madame must be referencing, many large terrestrial vertebrates, commonly referred to as dinosaurs, cavorted."
I said, "That will be all Jeeves."
He said, "Thank you, Madame."
