As one who grew up in the years immediately following WW II, I've long been impressed with the stories of the citizens of London going about their business, upper lips as stiff as Sheffield steel while the bombs and rockets fell from the sky, night after night. People slept in the underground and in the suburbs, houses such as my parents once lived in had a reinforced bomb shelter in the back garden. If they were terrified, they kept it to themselves. England was devastated, the English were not.
I have to be impressed by the story related today in the Daily Mail by an Englishman who took refuge in a restaurant in the Taj Mahal hotel while the shooting went on on the other side of an improvised barricade.
"I was extremely lucky. I was with a very good bunch of people. Three or four of us were Brits"said Nick Hayward. Remaining calm and sober, they conducted a search for booby traps and built barricades.
At 5 O'Clock int he morning, as it began to seem that Indian troops would soon retake the hotel lobby, the group, stirred but not shaken, found some glasses and a bottle of vintage champagne.
"the head waiter came rushing across to me and said, “No, no, you can’t do that!” and I said, 'Well we’re going to' and he said, 'No sir, those are the wrong type of glasses. I shall find you champagne flutes.' "My kind of people -- and my kind of hotel.
Watching yet another horror unfold, it is a small ray of hope in the human spirit that a story like this brings out that allows me to get up and go on.
ReplyDeleteWhile I feel grievously sad for those who lost their lives in this senseless attack, I raise my glass to those who found a way to survive and then celebrate that survival.
Hear! Hear!
This anecdote reminds me of a line from the movie, On the Beach, where two Englishman are in a club and ask for vintage Port. The waiter declares that the Port is not yet ready to drink (vintage Port requires 20 years in bottle to age properly). Talk about grim irony.
ReplyDeleteThis is a terrific post, Fog - saying what needs to be said about the fear mongering which is beginning to become all too much a part of our societal rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of the things I admire most about the English, whether it's actually true or not: the value given to character. End of the world be damned, we will not drink the port before its time, we will not allow ourselves to be diminished by fear.
ReplyDeleteOf course sometimes Indians do a very good job of being Brits.
I read a good article about the politics of fear, Joe McCarthy and the Republican party the other day - I think I'll write about it.
Seems like these terrorists have taken a page out of our own country's playbook - politics of fear indeed.
ReplyDeleteWhat a glaring difference between this act of criminal violence and the massive protests in Thailand where the people participated in civil disobedience to being down a corrupt government, but where no one died (at least not that I've heard).
I found myself cheering for the masses as the corrupt leaders were beought to their knees.
That is what change SHOULD look like.
I read a good article about the politics of fear, Joe McCarthy and the Republican party the other day - I think I'll write about it.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely looking forward to reading it!!