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 Just another $95,000 hat. The royals may be a dysfunctional family, but there aren't that many of them. How do they manage to soak up obscene amounts of taxpayer money?
They own many lavish households, including Buckingham Palace in London, Balmoral Castle in Scotland, a lake cottage up north in Hayward, Wisconsin, and a condo in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, which is pretty much of a dump but they keep it anyway for sentimental reasons. Each residence requires specialized staff. In Balmoral there’s the Washer of the Wellies, who hoses down the queen’s boots after she goes mucking about on muddy pathways. Buckingham Palace’s Royal Roller keeps all 642 bathrooms supplied with Windsor-crested toilet paper. Someone has to keep track of their priceless china and silverware, then order more after a state dinner, because invariably some pieces get “borrowed” by ambassadors from certain nations we won’t mention. Members of the royal family also maintain extensive wardrobes. It wouldn’t do for the queen to be seen in a bright blue chemise in Warsaw on Tuesday and the same chemise in Johannesburg on Wednesday. Even when closer to home, she changes clothes several times daily: a tapa-cloth wrap for breakfast with the delegation from Papua New Guinea, a fluffy frock for touring a denture-manufacturing facility in the posh part of Birmingham, and a glittering gown for a gala honoring The Poor Old Sods Who Lost Their Family Inheritance When We Got Kicked Out of India. Once a dress is worn in public, the queen must never wear it again – so local women queue up at charity shops every Thursday hoping for the bargain of a lifetime when the queen’s discarded dresses get dropped off. As for the Windsor men, the Royal Medal-Maker constantly invents new categories to keep them from feeling useless. Each requires expensive precious metals and stones. Prince Philip’s medal for the Royal Order of the Garter Snake has green emerald eyes and a 14-karat-gold tongue. Prince Charles has nine medals, including one commissioned by the queen “on the occasion of hanging in there 53 years waiting for me to die so you could ascend to the throne.” You might have noticed that the queen has a thing about hats. Some are inspired by Dr. Suess’s “The Cat in the Hat,” others by the Mad Hatter of “Alice in Wonderland,” and still others by Kentucky Derby hats seen on socialites who’ve had too many mint juleps. The queen’s hats are festooned with ribbons, feathers, pompoms, flowers made of folded Kleenex, scraps of vintage wallpaper, random pieces from old games of Clue, Stone Age arrowheads, marbles, and Silly Putty. None of these come cheap. The Royal Milliner sources her material from all over the world, and the moment a seller realizes that the Windsors are involved, the asking price (even for marbles) rises exponentially. [Excerpted from Smartass Answers to Dumbass Questions, available at Amazon: click HERE.] Comments are closed.
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