A few years back, I was commissioned to write an editorial on a new pan-European scientific and cultural association based in Vienna. Since the association never really got off the ground, I’m not going to burden you unnecessarily with its aims and statutes. The only reason I’m mentioning this now defunct coterie of seasoned academics is because they paid for me to stay for three nights in a five-star hotel while researching my article, ostensibly the cover piece for their glossy new journal. Unfortunately, it was no longer the right time to be asking for EU funding for an eastward-looking institution. That particular train had left. So their project was already dead in the water and I knew it, although I did my best to appear optimistic.

However, those few days spent in Vienna, a city I had known somewhat when I was sixteen, were a delight, and the hotel was everything a top establishment should be: infuriatingly obsequious. Various factoti (if this is the plural of factotum) were forever opening doors, depressing lift buttons, offering umbrellas, calling taxis, pulling out chairs and carrying bags for me, although I was clearly a perfectly healthy individual in my prime, probably of sound mind, equipped with the regulation number of appendages and thus fully capable of doing all these things for myself. It was at once both irritating and enervating. How do the rich survive this kind of intrusive pampering? It would turn me into an axe murderer within a month.

Why I think of this now is because a penny has just dropped, as it were, in my appreciation of my fellows. Isn’t it strange how those who rail most loudly against the intrusions of the nanny state (and I must admit to being one of them, on occasions) are the same people who expect to be nannied the most on a day-to-day basis? Are their plutocratic lives really so stressful that they actually need an electronic valet to arrange for their accommodation, book them a table and provide a parking service? Are they truly so exhausted at the end of a hard day of leveraged acquisition or a round of golf that they cannot possibly engage with the complex functions of a limousine door, but require it to be opened and closed by a manservant or, at the very least, by servo-assistance. Do they really need their vehicle to select a gear for them on the basis of a satellite preview of the road ahead? Is visibility that bad up in the clouds of Olympus? Can’t they dress themselves, tie their own shoelaces or peel their own grapes without a nanny?

Perhaps the meritocratic hatred of social welfare systems is due less to their expense and ultimate futility than to the way they ape the prerogatives of privilege. Free library cards? That’s like giving the marginalized their own club. Bus tokens are only a hop-skip away from free limos for all. Meal vouchers and school milk are the moral equivalent of a silver spoon without any of the onerous obligations of noblesse. Guaranteed health care and insurance for all is tantamount to providing room service, complete with an option on smoked salmon and champagne at three in the morning, to unwashed millions from Milwaukee to Mumbai.

Yet as I lay there, all alone in my ridiculously king-sized bed (surely no king was ever that big), quite unable to sleep because I could hear ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and the truly humungous pillow into which my head was inexorably sinking – the smallest of three, I’d already tossed the others into the walk-in closet – was so absurdly soft and enveloping that it was likely to asphyxiate me the moment I lost consciousness, my mind began to turn quite naturally (as it might for any filthy-rich insomniac) to thoughts of suicide by valet: “Room service? Send up someone skilled with a garrotte to 409, I’m having a little difficulty topping myself.” “Of course, sir, Gaston is already on his way. Please to settle the little matter of a perquisite before the deed, so as to avoid any unpleasantness, sir, thank you.” The hermetic world of the wealthy was giving me a serious case of weltschmerz.

Lobster Thermidor, I mused in my gigantic bed, a most luxurious dish, bears the unlikely name of the revolutionary and thoroughly proletarian month in which some talented chef prepared it for the imperial potentate Napoleon. Or maybe not, as another story claims it was created nearly a century later and named for a Paris review, “Thermidor”, which was popular at the time. Either version may be true, but it’s odd to think of Robespierre’s fearsome Reign of Terror being terminated by a creamed crustacean. I mention this because there it was in print, Lobster Thermidor, about halfway down the “Night Menu” of things that could be rustled-up, I suppose, by a suitably nocturnal chef working in Maurice Sendak’s very own Night Kitchen (with little Mickey as his “plongeur”), for anyone in dire need at 3:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, let’s say, of sustaining in the most simple manner; a modest person for whom a smidgen of something or other might just keep the wolf from the door till breakfast, if accompanied with a magnum of champagne. Whatever happened to a glass of warm milk and a digestive biscuit? Good enough for Nanny herself, but not good enough, it would seem, for the epically nannied classes.

And I use the term “epic” advisedly. Consider, if you will, the number of chickens dancing their rondo of death in rotating grills all over the world at any moment in time. Roughly 24 chickens, times 6 grills filled per night, times an average of maybe 120 chicken restaurants in any decent-sized city, times 50 such cities per country, times 100 countries rich enough to have chicken outlets … that gives us a ballpark figure of nearly 87 million roast chickens per day. This goes on, day in, day out, every week of the year: bad news for poultry, good news for farmers, but at least they all get eaten!

Now consider, just to make my point, the number of lobsters that have to be held in standby mode on the exceptionally rare chance that they might be pulled from the tank and conjured into a succulent Thermidor for Mr Yamamoto of Yamamoto Motors at 3:45 in the morning. That translates into entire populations of lobster waiting in a sort of lobster limbo upon the faintest possibility of sudden extinction. And that means many thousands more lobsters that have to be trapped, trawled and tanked daily, over and above those required for normal business among the lobster-eating fraternity. Most of these facultative or discretionary lobsters will die of old age, claws tied together to prevent them from using the passing eon to develop a sign language so advanced that it might express the infinite sadness of arthropod existence in a cruel and calculating world through haiku or iambic pentameter.

What makes a good hotel? Convenient location; friendly, helpful, well-informed reception; cheerful staff, clean and airy rooms; plumbing that works; a comfortable bed and a nourishing, tasty breakfast. How many stars might that be? One! Add a sauna, an in-house restaurant, basic room service, a wall-safe and a balcony for your private breakfast and you’ve got two. A wide choice of rooms, beds that adjust, a minibar stocked with salty stuff you’ll never eat, a fitness centre with swimming pool and a couple of brand-name shops will probably get you three. Valet parking, personal assistant, luxury lounge and cinema, a Jacuzzi in every suite, a masseur and all night room service gets you four. Well, for five stars you get someone to hold your willy while you wee, shake it dry afterwards and still ensure you the possibility of a totally ridiculous meal that opens with caviar and closes with huge, watery strawberries at three in the morning.

Yes, the rich are different. They’re stupid enough to pay exorbitant prices for services they’re not even going to use, services that most of us would not even consider crossing the road for.


© Edwin Drood, September 2013



Illustration:

Drawing by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), from Alice's adventures in wonderland by Lewis Carrol.