Me and My 80 Room Manor

As befits someone of my social standing,  I will travel abroad soon, where I will stay in an 80-room manor.

It is the sort of manor which, should you wish to find it on Wikipedia, nothing is stopping you other than the fact that I’m not going to tell you the name of it.

Just exactly like Gosford Park, except that it won’t be as many people staying there, and we’ve asked them to keep the cameras at bay.

Also, I won’t swan around in one of those dresses, necessarily, and if I do they I will also be sporting marks where my son has grabbed at me with tiny and insistent food-covered fists.

But never fear, we will shed the children at a certain hour, and drink plenty of sherry in the evening.

Why

Why are we going to an 80-room Georgian country house? Is it a hotel? Absolutely not: it is a private residential manor, where we will stay with the occupants. My father-in-law, a researcher by vocation, is also a researcher by avocation, and in years past he has turned his attention to genealogical research. Not the puttering kind, that many people do, but the sort where he translates texts from early German and whatnot, or at least gets his children to translate them for him, and then things are published, etc. etc.

It is not yet clear whether he has ferreted out the relatives in the blood line with 80-room manors by design or not, but suffice it to say that our larger family is not foisting itself on any potato farmers struggling along in slanted and windowless stone huts with cool clear water drizzling down the walls.

Perhaps my husband does not have any relatives like that, aside from by marriage.

In any event, my father-in-law has struck up a true and lasting friendship with the owner and resident of the manor, who is also a genealogical researcher. Consequently my in-laws go to 80-room manors all the time.

What, yours don’t?

Who

In addition to my father-in-law, our party includes my mother-in-law, my husband, and his sister. We are also bringing along our 18 month old son, and his sister is bringing her 16 month old daughter.

Babies and manors: a classic combo! They go together like . . . .peanut butter and lobster?

We will bring two peanut butters.

More on this later, obviously!