South Room Duty

AJD and I have different circadian rhythms: he's a night owl and I'm a lark.  We've learned the hard way that we have a tendency to screw up each other's sleep cycles, so during the week I usually end up sleeping in my room rather than his.  Every Sunday, when I migrate back to my room, one or two of the Wild Republicans come with me.

I never choose who is going to be posted for duty in my room for that week, because I'm not capable of choosing between my animals.  Ask me which of them is my favourite, and I will reply that I don't have a favourite, but I have a special soft spot for Sleepyhead and Plouie and Cami and Mahler and Seleucus and... before long I will have produced a litany of the entire populace.  My favourite animal is whichever one I happen to be holding at the time.

The reasons behind the assignments are not entirely clear to me.  Sometimes, AJD asserts, the animal with south room duty volunteers simply because he likes me.  This was the case with Parsley (the okapi), who is on duty this week.  Other times there seems to be more to it than that.  For the young ones, south room duty seems to be a break from study (for them), with an additional bonus in some cases as an opportunity for the adults to have one less rambunctious youngster around.  For the adults, it's sometimes a sort of working vacation, and sometimes a bit more.

Alfredo and Beppe had south room duty together last week, and this was both an opportunity for them to re-bond after their separation and a chance for Alfredo to get a bit of a break before throwing himself into preparations for the arrival of the delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy; as leader, most of the work falls to him.  Alfredo tends to use south room duty as a chance to confer with Seal about stuff - what, I'm not privy to.  Conferring with Seal, and sometimes even the private citizens, is apparently part of the point at least some of the time.

Sometimes Murchison is posted here, which is particularly intriguing.  He's a secret agent of some sort, and he doesn't believe in time off, so whenever south room duty falls to Murchison, one has to suspect something is up.

Sleepyhead has permanent south room duty.  I don't think this was planned; I think that initially the idea was that he'd be in here until his jet lag wore off.  Since he's been here almost six months and is just as jet-lagged as he was at first, I've taken his presence here as permanent; it's a good thing Seal has a certain fondness for him.  The other animals vary dramatically in their reactions to Sleepyhead.  Khamsin thinks he's really boring; Vim thinks he's confusing; Cami is worried about him; Tibby thinks he's unusually enlightened; Seleucus returned from his last south room duty feeling like his sense of reality had been warped; some of the others just ignore him; and so on.

Parsley hadn't had south room duty in a very long time - long enough that I don't think he'd met Sleepyhead before.  He clearly falls into the "Sleepyhead is good for cuddling" camp, which is good, because Sleepyhead took an immediate shine to him.  I conjecture that south room duty for Parsley - this time, at least - is going to be purely a mission of R&R.