Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at Wimbledon

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is playing at the Haymarket Theatre this summer. Advertising posters for the play are all over London's tube network. So, this old favourite was on my mind as I made my way to Wimbledon earlier this week.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a (brilliant) Tom Stoppard play, based on the same characters and events as William Shakespeare's Hamlet, but told with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the protagonists. These are Hamlet's childhood friends, roped in by the King and Queen to try and coax Hamlet out of his madness. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern only half understand the situation they've let themselves into, fail to change Hamlet, make some brilliant but immediately forgotten discoveries along the way, and are ultimately killed for their troubles. Stoppard makes these unfortunates his tragicomic heroes. Hamlet and OpheIia have bit roles in this play, walking in and out of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's life-story, setting context.

I've always loved the way Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead inverts figure and ground, forcing an expansion of perspective. That is also the reason I love being at Wimbledon during the first week.

During the first week at Wimbledon, one can watch the stars play on Centre Court. I got to see King Rafa stride on to Centre Court as defending champion. Now, he owns this stage. It was fun to watch doubting Prince Andy ask "To be or not to be, that is the question" of his not-quite-adoring home fans. A Miss Marple look alike who was sitting next to me prefers Novak Djokovic to Andy Murray, because Novak always applauds his opponent's shots.

However, the most distinctive and memorable Wimbledon experience is quite possibly watching matches on the outside courts. These are courts with no grandstands or TV cameras, where less famous names play. Fans generally sit court side, yards away from the players, like at the local tennis club. I can't think of any other world class event where fans get so close to the performers; in cricketing terms this is like watching the action from second slip.

Sitting so close to the action, it is easy to tune into the physicality of the game: ball speed, spin and bounce, the player's size and gait. Mood and emotion from the players - a grimace fleeting across a face, a pleading glance at a coach, the slope of a shoulder - communicates in a way that doesn't happen on TV or in the stadium courts. The court side perspective brings these matches alive, despite the unfamiliar names.

For instance, I cheered for a slender Chinese girl called Shuai Zhang who was taking on the muscular Svetlana Kuznetsova. Zhang, who has just stabilized a spot in the top 100, did brilliantly to take the first set before Kuznetsova overpowered her. Zhang's mother and coach were sitting right across the aisle from me. They appreciated the support. They'd exchange thumbs up signs with me whenever I cheered Zhang for threading the needle with a backhand down the line. This sort of interaction is so not going to happen with Andy Murray's mom up on Centre Court.

I watched Monica Niculescu playing a successful underarm drop serve, a shot I thought had retired with Michael Chang. I watched the world #163 Ruben Bemelmans limp off court, visibly exhausted after losing a five set marathon to world #34 Julien Benneteau. Watching court-side, it is a lot easier to respect how good a player the world #163 really is.

Perhaps I am sympathetic to non-superstars because I am primarily a cricket fan. Cricket lends itself especially well to showcasing the spunk and grit of the lesser gods. Balwinder Singh Sandhu always has a place in my cricketing pantheon for THAT delivery to Gordon Greenidge in the 1983 World Cup final. Similarly, Sameer Dighe also has a place in my pantheon for taking India to victory against Waugh's Aussies in that epoch-making Chennai test match in 2001, despite a rampaging Glenn McGrath. In tennis, players of the stature of Balwinder Singh Sandhu and Sameer Dighe don't play in the equivalent of World Cup finals, say in Wimbledon finals.

Watching Zhang, Niculescu and Bemelmans on the outside courts of Wimbledon is perhaps the closest tennis gets to being a game, not just of the superstars, but of ordinary people striving for greatness. The first week at Wimbledon is spacious enough, big-hearted enough, to accommodate not just sweet Prince Hamlet, but also Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Atlantis Books, Oia, Santorini, and the triumph of Kindle

My family were on a chilled out vacation in the cliff-top village of Oia, on the Greek island of Santorini, when we discovered one of the world’s great bookshops. Specifically, the tenth best bookshop in the world, as certified by Lonely Planet. Other cities which feature top ten bookshops are London, Paris, San Francisco, Rome, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Beijing. Pattern recognition software would never have completed that list with Oia, Santorini, population 1230, but the editors of Lonely Planet got this one right. Atlantis Books deserves to be on the top ten list. It is almost everything a bookshop should be.



Atlantis Books is lined from floor to ceiling with books, with more books piled up on table tops and benches. It has a two shelves labelled Political Theory, and no airport-style displays featuring the latest John Grisham best seller. The greatest number of books are in English, but it also has shelves of German, French and Greek books. The internal roof is contoured, and supports a paper chandelier. A nook leads up into a cranny, which leads up a twisty chute with poetry stencilled on to the whitewash, which leads up on to a terrace overlooking the caldera, which hosts literary or musical events on summer evenings. It smells like a college library, or a multi-generational family library.

The name Atlantis Books is moist with meaning. Remains of a sophisticated Minoan culture dating back to 1500 BC have been discovered on Santorini. This may well have been the basis for Plato’s writings about Atlantis, about the glorious island civilization which was swallowed by the sea.

The staff at Atlantis Books are great. They are happy smiling youngsters from the USA or the UK who clearly have a college education, love books, and are happy to talk with guests about their shop. Some of the staff sleep in the shop, in neat beds tucked away into little corners. One of them, an English poet wearing a cloth cap and a wispy beard, asked me what I did. “I’m a business executive”, I told him. “You must be a photographer”, he replied, pointing to my Canon DSLR. He was being nice. Poets and photographers fit the Atlantis Books vibe better than executives or lawyers.

I found a book I wanted to buy. It was an autographed copy of a graphic novel called The Corridor, by Sarnath Banerjee. I'd never heard of Sarnath Banerjee, or of contemporary Indian graphic novels, which is great, because the point of browsing in a bookshop is to discover new stuff.

My wife and daughters also picked out books they wanted to buy. We proceeded to the billing counter. For the first time in our long and chatty visit, the staff were nonplussed. They talked among themselves about how to transact a sale. They couldn't get the credit card reader to work, online or offline. We finally paid cash. That struggle to get the credit card reader to work hints at why Atlantis Books, for all its virtues, is not quite everything a bookshop should be. I have a hunch it isn't profitable.

Atlantis Books may not need to be profitable. The gorgeous real estate could make sense as an independent investment. A lot of the books are hand-me-downs, donations from well wishers. I find it easy to imagine the staff are happy to work for a plane ticket, a bed in the bookshop, and a chance to enjoy Santorini through the summer. But the amateur feel of the place, running a bookshop for love rather than for money, connects up with another theme from our vacation: that bookshops selling paper books are not going be around very long. Those that are going to be around are characterful amateur ventures like Atlantis Books, rather than commercial outfits that care about moving merchandise.

We discovered e-books because our daughters packed their own backpacks on this vacation.

Our elder daughter's backpack was seriously heavy. Investigations revealed that this was because it was stuffed full of Enid Blytons and Harry Potters for holiday reading. Carrying this weight on flights was not an option. The negotiated compromise was to download her books onto the Kindle iPad app, which worked beautifully. My daughter discovered how to annotate, and therefore personalize, e-books on Kindle. This format also sorts out the thorny question of archiving (Enid Blytons from my childhood are still around at my mother's place, but they are disintegrating) and of storage (should we get rid of some Dr Seuss to create room for Malory Towers?).

I might be wrong here. People have been predicting the death of the bank branch for twenty years now, with good reason, but there still is no sign that branches are going away. Amazon, Apple, the greedy IPR lobby and captured regulators can still destroy e-books. They will have plenty of opportunity to mess up pricing, technology standards and user rights. But chances are, they won't. Chances are that by the time my children are old enough to explore the Cyclades without their parents, paper books will be quaint, much loved relics from the past; like hand wound wrist watches, Kodachrome slides, fountain pens or vinyl records.

Chennai Super Kings' Feminist Karma

Chennai Super Kings, my home town cricket team, just won IPL 4 in style. They have clearly been the best team on show since the inception of the IPL, with two trophies, one runner up spot, and one semi-final finish.

Many reasons have been ascribed to this performance, from MS Dhoni's captaincy, to the stability of the squad, to Stephen Fleming's coaching. I really like the tactical intelligence of CSK's game plans - Ashwin opening the bowling, Hussey and Vijay playing traditional cricket shots rather than low percentage slogs and Dil-scoops, Badrinath's clear role as the crisis man, Dougie Bollinger's yorkers at the death, shuffling the batting order to maintain left-right pairs - good, smart cricket.

But, as the many erudite Mylapore Mamis in CSK's fan base will be happy to explain, success does not derive only from one's tactics, from the flow of one's deeds on the field of action, from one's karyas on the dharmakshetra. Success also derives from karma, from the stock of goodness accumulated through many small acts of kindness and decency. These acts happened long before the men in yellow stepped onto the dharmakshetra of Chepauk.

One of these karmic factors working for CSK, which mainstream cricket commentators seem to have completely missed, is their co-ed cheering squad. CSK were the only IPL team with both men and women in their cheering squad. They were led by a shaven-headed fifty one year old drummer called Sivamani.

I certainly don't mean to pass judgment on the all-girl cheerleading squads, or on their admirers, as "bad". But CSK's co-ed approach just feels better, more comfortable, more natural. There is no obvious reason why leading a cheer for a sports team should be sexually charged. Cricket has long had a tradition of colourful, noisy and committed fans: Sri Lanka's Percy Abeysekara, India's Sudhir Gautam, West Indies' Trini Posse, England's Barmy Army. This cheering was never sexy (though the Barmy Army's chat with an Aussie fielder at the boundary line could involve pointed references to his sexuality). Sex and cricket always were fulfilling, but distinct, aspects of life.

When cheerleading was invented in America, at Princeton University in 1884, it was an all-male activity. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt were cheerleaders in their time. Somewhere along the way, cheering a sports team morphed into the stylized sexual displays put on in the USA today in football and basketball (but not in cricket's cousin baseball). The IPL imported this into cricket in the name of "marketing".

Perhaps the greatest failure of NFL style cheerleading at the IPL is not moral but material: it doesn't seem to work in marketing terms. Several teams with great looking all-girl cheering squads are failing to fill their stadiums, or to animate their crowds. Ultimately, people who want to watch dancing girls can watch them elsewhere, without the annoying bat-ball distractions. The men and women who pitch up at cricket matches are there to enjoy the cricket. Sivamani and his co-ed troop successfully orchestrated the cheering of these real fans. CSK's fans were easily the most passionate and vocal in the IPL, effectively adding another player to CSK, making them almost invincible at home. Long may the force remain with CSK, and with Sivamani.

Alfred North Whitehead on Civilization

Loved this quote by Alfred North Whitehead:

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them".

By this formulation, civilization is about being able to drink water out of a tap without worrying about infectious diseases. It is about being able to click I Agree to credit card or iTunes terms and conditions without worrying about nasties lurking in the fine print.

The Schengen Agreement, which makes possible paper free travel between 25 countries in Western Europe, is an advance for civilization. That feels like a more important standard than some pseudo-scientific "cost benefit analysis".

By contract, the American tax code - the 70000 page document which keeps an army of tax lawyers in profitable (but profoundly unfulfilling) employment – is not just a drag on the world economy. It is an assault on civilization itself.

BBC North collaboration pods. Or speed dating wheels?

BBC's plush and stylish new offices in Salford, near Manchester, are sprinkled with "collaboration pods".

The idea is that useful work happens when people talk to each other, face to face, rather than sit around in closed-door offices. Doing away with offices and having these collaboration pods should encourage people to do just that. However, having sufferred in new-age work spaces for decades, I have a hunch these pods aren't really going to foster collaboration.

Collaboration generally happens when people sit at right angles to each other, or in an arc, facing a white-board. It happens at coffee machines or water coolers, when people stand at right angles to each other, or in an arc, and the space above the coffee machine or water cooler becomes an air white-board.

Collaboration doesn't happen when two people are sitting squarely opposite each other. This is how people sit at an interview, when they are assessing or evaluating each other. These collaboration pods feel too open for most recruitment interviews, and anyway the interviews I give usually need a table-top work surface and a whiteboard. But these collaboration pods might just have struck the perfect balance between openness and privacy for a speed date. Perhaps speed-romance will now bloom amongst BBC staffers in Salford, near Manchester.

Pippa Middleton's Cricketing Boyfriend

Know who Pippa is dating, dahling? She's with England's finest doosra-man. Palace sources inform us that Pippa Middleton's boyfriend, and date at the Royal Wedding, is former England off spinner Alex Loudon.

Loudon is an old-Etonian friend of Prince William who captained England under 19s. He turned pro and played county cricket for Kent and Warwickshire with some success, when he morphed from a batsman into an off-spinner with a cunning doosra. He was picked for England and toured Pakistan in 2005, but didn't get a game. He played his only ODI in 2006 against Sri Lanka, and was run-out without facing a ball, as a part of a crushing 0-5 series loss to Mahela's Marauders.

He retired in 2007, the ripe old age of 27, to attend London Business School and subsequently pursue a career as a broker in the City. That may have been a very good call, given Swanny's success. It can't be easy to maintain an Old Etonian's lifestyle on a county pro's income.

Is there an event-marketing opportunity here? Prince William plays a bit of cricket too. Wills and A-Lo captaining...rival teams in whites...Kate and Pippa in the pavilion-tent...boaters and floaty dresses...Pimm's No. 1...Wills Navy Cut...Lady Di's favourite charity...no liveried servants, too colonial...Dave and Sam Cam...His Highness Jyotiraditya Scindia might grace the occasion... Live TV coverage might be embarrassing, an edited 10 minute news clip could do the job nicely. An antidote to the IPL. Sure, the IPL is more good than bad. But cricket needs more cultural-flavours than the IPL can provide.

Regardless, well played Alex Loudon. Bowled the doosra maiden over.

Wills Navy Cut @ The Royal Wedding

The Imperial Tobacco Company will launch Wills Navy Cut in the UK tomorrow, to mark the happy and auspicious occasion of the Royal Wedding.

Brand spokesperson Yogi Tobaccowallah explained "The future Emperor William is lovingly referred to as 'Wills' by his subjects. He will be getting married in his smart Navy Cut suit. He and his beloved are perfectly matched, made for each other, just like the filter and tobacco in Wills Navy Cut cigarettes. We have every confidence that the future Emperor and Empress will make Wills Navy Cut their smoke of choice".

Mr Tobaccowallah will be at Westminster Abbey tomorrow to present the UK's first carton of Wills Navy Cut to the royal couple, as a special wedding gift.





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