Ordinary names

LONDON – Getting back to London from Edinburgh, Scotland was a breeze. You hop your British Airways jet at Edinburgh’s modern airport (better than ours), they serve you two pies in flight, wine, soft drinks, then you’re landing at Hearthrow.

Getting from London’s airport into the heart of central London, on the other hand, was the rub. You can’t imagine the traffic. I thought I was back in Manila on a Friday night. It took my driver two and a half hours to inch this weary traveller back to my hotel, the Ritz, as we threaded our way through bumper-to-bumper gridlock.

Thousands of young men and women, thronging the sidewalks and catching buses, or heading for the Tube, as they poured out of Hyde Park gave us our first clue. They were coming from an open-air concert of the Chili Peppers. Nope, stupid. That’s not a seasoning; it’s a rook band. It’s hard to keep up with those groups in this age of Eminem, punk rockers, and the No Waist (your pants are falling) generation.

Then there were the toffs and swells (forgive the old-fashioned terms) in their "smoking" (tudedos) and black ties, headed for the Dorchester and other posh hostelry’s ballrooms for their Friday night dinners and soirées. Truly, London still swings and is absolutely delightful.

The railroad workers have called off their planned strike. (Yes, this is the land of strikes, so if you’re coming here, keep your eye cocked to the "strike calendar".) The Underground, or "Tube" workers, on the other hand, are still going on strike tomorrow, Tuesday. The Lord Mayor is plumb disgusted with the RMT union. If you’re planning to visit London Tuesday, remember, you won’t be able to use the famous London Underground – and there’ll be more traffic above-ground since everybody will be taking his or her own vehicle. Or bicycle. A word to the wise.

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I’ve just gotten word that National Democratic Front Chief Political Consultant, actually Communist Park leader Jose Ma. Sison is pissed off with President GMA.

Commenting on the third round of "formal talks" in Oslo. Norway, Joma growled: "It is disappointing that the Macapagal-Arroyo regime sent the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) panel to Oslo only to conjure the illusion that Macapagal-Arroyo was interested in peace negotiations while waiting for her proclamation in Congress as the newly-elected president on 24 June."

"It appears," Sison huffed, "the Macapagal-Arroyo, whom many believe was fraudulently elected on 10 May 2004, overestimates herself and wants to impress everyone that she has no need for the peace negotiations."

He assailed the "chicanery and bad faith of the US-Arroyo regime".

In this light, why should our government bother at all to "negotiate" or go through the motions of parleying with an absentee Communist revolutionary leader like Joma Sison, who’s stuck out in Holland and is becoming irrelevant to the "struggle" at home?

To begin with, Sison and his so-called New People’s Army supported FPJ and the Opposition in the past May 10 elections. Secondly, despite the ongoing and strangely persistent negotiations, the Communist NPA continues to attack not only army and police outposts and civilians, but repeatedly try to blow up power stations and destabilized the country.

I think we ought to go back to the method of the great President Ramon Magsaysay – the four F’s. Namely, Find ’em, Fool ’em. Fight ’em – Finish ’em.

For us, alas, it’s talk-talk, while for the NPAs it’s fight-fight.

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One of the most wonderful experiences you can have in London – if you’re so inclined, and find the time – is to enjoy a play by William Shakespeare in the original sport where it was first enacted.

This is in the new Globe Theater, lovingly reconstructed to look almost exactly like the original (which had been built in 1599), on the south bank of the Thames river, in the commercial district of Southwark.

One of my life’s unforgettable experiences was to go there to watch, on its open-air stage, an almost unknown Shakespearean play, named Measure for Measure.

It was drizzling slightly, but viewers stayed on in the open quadrangle, to let the beauty of Shakespeare’s language envelope and stir their imaginations. As for us, who had seats under the thatched roof, in the stands, we were dry and more fortunate.

What a genius Shakespeare was! He wrote of everything and set his scenes, drama or tragedy or comedy, in every location whatever the time and place, however, he spoke to the universal heart.

The new Globe in Southwark may have been the work of many people, including the designer-architect Theo Crosby (1925-1994), but it was – everybody concedes – the culmination of "the dream of one man". It was an American named Sam Wanamaker (1919-1993).

When the young American actor came to London in 1949, he went to visit the site of Shakespeare’s Globe only to find that the only testimony to its existence was a blackened bronze plaque on the wall of a beer brewery. He decided he would erect a more fitting memorial – a replica of the old Globe theater itself.

He went about recruiting fellow enthusiasts and raising funds. And now, finished just a decade ago – shortly before Wanamaker’s death – you can see the fulfillment of that dream. That’s the way things get done on this striving planet. Someone starts out with a dream, and if consistent and plucky, he or she follows it all the way to fruition and fulfillment. Wanamaker was honored by Queen Elizabeth II with a CBE – the knighthood of the Commander of the British Empire. But his true monument, the defining honor of his life, is the Globe Theater itself.

And here Shakespeare lives. He continues, in these precincts, to demonstrate that the English tongue can either be harsh or poetic, but in every situation manages communicate eloquently. Shakespeare himself never dreamt that "English" would be the global language, or the language of cyberspace. Yet, he was among the first to demonstrate its grace, strength, and relevance. Measure for Measure was a play about justice, constancy, compassion – and forgiveness.

Perhaps it never became famous, unlike Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Nights’ Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth, because, like Hollywood, Shakespeare gave it a happy ending.

Even the villains in the piece were forgiven – and rewarded.

But isn’t that true in Philippine life? The villains are almost always rewarded. In fact, it’s the good guys – as the American adage goes – who finish last.

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Whenever one goes to London, he cannot escape passing by the House of Commons, Westminster Abbey and, of course, that well-recognized landmark, the clock tower called Big Ben.

Have you ever wondered why the tower, popularized recently once again by one of the James Bond movies, is called Big Ben? The term actually refers to the great bell which weights 13 and a half tons, surrounded by four Little Bens. Thanks to satellite TV and radio, everyone seems familiar with the sound of Big Ben’s chimes. They are the strains of a religious hymn which goes:

So hour by hour be Thou my Guide,

That by Thy power no step may slide...

As for the name Big Ben, it honors Sir Benjamin Hall, who’s completely been forgotten. His only distinction is that he happened to be the Chief Commissioner of Works when the bell was installed. The title then was a form of flattery or sycophancy. But it has been immortalized by repetition, although those who call it "Big Ben" don’t know who Ben was.

Place names which have become revered through the passage of time are often found to have been derived from many ordinary individuals. For example, newspapers around the world, repeatedly refer to the Prime Minister’s residence (currently Tony Blair’s) as No. 10 Downing Street. All the statements of England’s Prime Ministers from Disraeli, Gladstone, Churchill, Maggie Thatcher, to Blair, emanate from that address. All the communiqués, whenever Britain is at war, issue from 10 Downing Street.

Sir George Downing, who imparted his name to the street, was actually an opportunist and a slick political balimbing who became a republican under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the man who engineered the beheading of King Charles I.

Downing shrewdly knew when to turn his coat: when Charles II returned to the throne, Downing became the most ardent royalist. Downing was, in fact, an early graduate of Harvard – when he was 15 his family had immigrated to Boston at the instigation of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts. Returning to England at the age of 22, Downing wheeled and dealed his way to prominence. When the monarchy was restored, he had no qualms about hunting down his former allies and friends who had connived to execute King Charles I, arresting three of them in Holland and sending them back in chains to England.

Samuel Pepys, whose diary made him the classic gossip columnist of all time, called Downing a "perfidious rogue". Charles II, the son of the same king Downing had originally helped send to the scaffold, rewarded his newly "faithful" servant with a baronetcy and a grant of land in Whitehall – which enabled Downing to build "Downing Street".