Agent Zigzag

The book I'm currently reading is really quite excellent. It's about counter-espionage and the double-cross agents the British operated in World War II. It got me thinking. I've noticed that rain, other bad weather, terrorists, delays, cancellations, crowds, floods and other assorted bad luck don't seem to get the Brits down at all. I mean, after 23 straight days of rain in the middle of the summer, the average Brit will say something like, "Bit wet out, wot?" It leaves a foreigner wondering. Well, there's a jolly good passage in the book that captures this quite well, I think. Here it is:

He watched his fellow men at war and reflected on their stoicism. One night the Carlton Club was hit by a bomb. The members of the surrounding clubs, in pyjamas and slippers, formed long lines to save the library from the flames, passing books from hand to hand and discussing the merits of each as they passed.

Blimey. I can just hear them now. "H.G Wells or Dickens?". "By God, they were both tossers, weren't they?" "Indeed."

If being bombed out of bed and drafted into a work detail in the middle of the night while bits of your chums are scattered in the street doesn't get a rise out of them, nothing will.