London - At Sixes and Sevens

Jolly old London gave new meaning to a typical English phrase, “at sixes and sevens”, when a string of bombs went off in the heart of the city the day after it had been selected as the venue for the 2012 Olympics. Brits were truly at sixes and sevens – on the sixth, they were in seventh heaven after London trumped Paris to become the host city for the 2012 Olympics, but the very next day, on the seventh, their euphoria was abruptly deep-sixed by the bombings.

Back home newspaper editorials were spinning this tragedy in line with their respective ideologies. Thus, in my left hand, The New York Times wondered “why the wealthy nations have not done enough about the root causes of terrorism and why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continue to function after almost four years of the so-called war on terrorism.” While, in my right hand, The Wall Street Journal suggested that “retreat from battling the Islamists in the Middle East would only make it easier for them to take the battle to us at home, as they did yesterday in London.”

Nevertheless, it was Tunku Varadarajan, editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal, who nailed the British character for what it is in an apolitical tribute. In the Weekend Journal’s De Gustibus column entitled, “The Sign Says 'Take Courage' and the Brits Do”, Mr. Varadarajan wrote:

It really is considered unseemly to complain, or to feel sorry for oneself, among Britons: This aversion to self-pity is bad for the terrorists, who thrive on attention and the sowing of chaos. They won’t get much satisfaction in Britain. Londoners will not retreat into their shells, and they are unlikely to do as the Spaniards did and draw out the tragedy with a lot of public recrimination, or to capitulate in any way.

The secret of British composure is that Britons really do feel proud of their civilization. On the whole, they apologize for very little, which is as it should be. Their message to terrorists is always likely to be straight and robust: “How dare you! I'm British!”

So I suspect that the sixes and sevens are not going to last for very long and our dear friends across the pond will collectively pick themselves up, dust off their jacket, stick their chest out, put their chin up, and show those damn cowards how civilized people behave. As for me, the next time I am in London, I am going to use the Underground as usual – but to the first gent that I bump into on the tube, I will proffer, “Mr. Livingstone, I presume.”