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West Wittering Again – Henry Royce Sketches The R Series Engine

Eric Menneteau, 2004, Schneider Trophy at the London Science Museum

Spent a wonderful week with the BMW Foundation at Paretz, near Berlin. On that, more shortly. But was thinking while there that BMW, back in the day, had produced BMW 801 engines for e.g. the Focke-Wulf Bf-190 fighter that pilots like my father Tim would have faced in WWII. The most produced radial aero engine of the Third Reich period.

Then this evening I watched Jacqui Farnham’s Channel 5 programme Rolls-Royce: Dream Machines, which I had recorded while travelling. And discovered something I had never heard before.

That was that Henry Royce had moved to West Wittering – and at one point sketched out in the beach sand an early design for the R series engine, which powered Britain’s successful Schneider Trophy contender, and would later evolve into the famous Merlin engine …

… Which powered e.g. the Hawker Hurricane.

… One of which Tim was flying when he was shot down in 1940.

… At West Wittering.

Our Planet: Teased By Attenborough And Netflix

Credit: Netflix

When I got back from Berlin today, Elaine and I went across to Westminster City Hall for the WWF trailing of the forthcoming ‘Our Planet‘ series with Netflix and Silverback.

Great presentations from the likes of Sir David Attenborough, who is becoming steadily more activist, and Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Met and talked to a wide spectrum of people in the field before the showing, including Stanley Johnson (whose son Jo resigned from the Government today, apparently over Brexit, which he sees as a complete cock-up), then went across to the Cinnamon Club for a delightful dinner with Clare Kerr (who I got to know during our joint time as members of WWF UK’s Council of Ambassadors) and her husband, Nick Hurd.

Out And About In Paretz

Sent off to wander for 30 minutes in the Paretz “wilds” (photo: Marc Beckmann)

Quite liked this photo of me prowling around in “nature” during the Paretz meeting, though I’m not completely sure I look persuaded that this is Nature as she should be. Meanwhile, my GreenBiz blog on the adventure has now been reposted by the BMW Foundation.

With BMW Foundation And Toniic In Paretz

A piece of the Berlin Wall seen through the window of a PwC office, with the Bundestag in the background

Anti-war mural in nearby park

By the entrance

Sharpshooter

Barging by

River Spree

The BMW Foundation HQ is somewhere towards the top

Now we’re in Paretz

Have seen storks’ nest, but no storks

Doing my session

Bak home at the Storchenhof “ranch”

Walking to the Paretz Akademie

Alison and Tell, ahead

Radical actions favoured

Final session, reduced group

Frank Niederländer winds up the event

Some of the name badges left by participants

Flew to Germany on Monday, initially to Berlin for a session at the BMW Foundation Hebert Quandt HQ, featuring a beamed-in Jeremy Rifkin, then on by coach to the intriguing and once-royal village of Paretz. Spent several thought-provoking days with some 30 BMW Foundation and (the impact investment network) Toniic invitees – with some thoughts provoked captured in my latest GreenBiz column.

An Ode To Our Mother – And Her Main Admirer

Tim and Pat married in 1948 – and many, many moons later

Here is a poem my sister Caroline composed recently, capturing elements of the adventures of looking after our elderly parents – he teetering on the edge of 98 in December, she 96. I can only say I love it. Its acute observation of two extraordinary beings and its patience and stamina in the face of life’s adversities.

The Year of Looking After Mum

In the half-light from the Anglepoise
she is a Limavady beach back in the fifties,
the pillow curving in sand-dune folds around her silver hair,
a beached and bleached mermaid – legs as useless.

This bedroom where you and he have slept and laughed and loved.
The wedding dresses twirled, the hair bedecked,
bridesmaids fluttering like cabbage whites over the brassica.
The mystery of the missing Doll’s House, solved.
The First Man on the Moon in shuddering black and white
on a grey plastic television, which creaked and pulsed with heat;
all six of us in your seven-acre bed.
The carpet, once fluffy vanilla clouds,
now matted and reeking like a damp Labrador.
The resident ghost appearing and disappearing here, in delusion and reality,
came to stay for good when the imaginary became your life.
Hallucinations so real you could reach through the shimmering portal
and pinch their warmly yielding flesh.
Your sightless eyes following apparitions in some other parallel bedroom
where all the abandoned little boys in the world had ample chocolate
and the floor was flooded to your ankles, a rippling High Spring Tide
that wasn’t there.
Where nothing was real except my father.
Now it’s full of fading light and holding on.
Every dent and scratch on ancient walls have history.
Every mark, careless graffiti, left behind in war and peace.
What matters is the minute.
Nothing else.

She says he loved her in an instant,
although she was wearing a stained apron, a dirty tea towel in her hand.
I think I love you, he said.
Don’t be silly, she replied.
But he was right.
The next day he came back with two new tea towels – post-war gold dust.
He had a girlfriend called Misty – she went back to America.
Mum was sad for her.

Caroline Elkington, Little Rissington, 2018

Beyond The Triple Bottom Line

From The Marketing Journal

Grateful to Christian Sarkar for this interview in The Marketing Journal,  following our conversation on Monday.

Rosa Parks, Meet Dr Who

Source: BBC (Vinette Robinson, Jodie Whittaker and the original Rosa Parks)

Off and on, I have watched the BBC’s Dr Who, in its various guises, since it began in 1963. Every so often, a new Doctor hooks me back in. Admit that I didn’t have high hopes for Jodie Whittaker as the thirteenth time around the block in the Tardis, but was moved by this evening’s show, riffing off the Rosa Parks historical-turning-point-on-a-bus-in-Alabama story.

If this gets even a few people digging back into the history of the civil rights movement that will be helpful, but I suspect that it will have opened many eyes – and hopefully minds. Loved Vinette Robinson as Parks: quiet, determined dignity in a human and civic rights cesspit.

Liked the central idea that apparently small, inconsequential events can set change the world. Saw The Telegraph dissed it, while The Independent liked it: the old political resonances still at work. Found some interesting background on Parks’ personal history here.

Source: HandsUpUnited

The Future Starts Here, Somewhere

Outside the Tech Mahindra event

During a website design session with Twist, in Richmond

After my last Board meeting, I dropped in on the V&A’s ‘The Future Starts Here’ exhibition

Really enjoyed the session I did for Tech Mahindra at Pennyhill Park, where I discussed the overlaps between Artificial Intelligence and the Sustainable Development agenda.

Lots going on at the moment, including the complete revamp of the Volans website, where we are working with Twist Creative. Real progress also being made with our Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry, with Aviva Investors, Covestro and Unilever all confirming their support this week.

Lots also going on in the realm of boards and advisory boards. Attended my last Board session for The Ecological Sequestration Trust and Resilience Brokers. Sad to leave, but after seven years I feel I have done as much as I can. And other opportunities keep coming up.

Slightly disappointed by the V&A’s ‘The Future Starts Here’ exhibition, which I dropped into after the meeting at Imperial College. But I did pick up a copy of Jaron Lanier’s stunning book, Dawn of the New Everything. Enjoying it immensely.

Marching For A People’s Vote On Brexit

Halloween comes to Mayfair – or is it the demons of Brexit?

A nudge from the past. The bench where Gaia and I sat in Grosvenor Square, in front of the FDR statue, while waiting for friends also bound for the march from nearby Park Lane

Eton Mess

Loved this hand-written banner some time before I realised it was being carried by Sue Riddlestone of Bioregional

Gaia and I smell Sue

Kamikaze in Park Lane

Loved this little drummer band, repurposing popular songs to protest Brexit

This banner was wonderfully colourful on both sides

Loved this play on Banksy’s recent shredding of an artwork as it sold at auction

Brexit blues

Half-way up Piccadilly

A couple on top of a telephone box of some sort capture the spirit

As I wend my way back to Embankment station

Got off the Tube at Hyde Park Corner, near SustainAbility’s erstwhile offices, and walked up through the backs to Grosvenor Square to meet Gaia – ahead of the People’s Vote march from Park Lane. Met her in front of the FDR statue, then met film-making friends of hers before we headed back across to Park Lane.

One of the many piles of books waiting to be read at home is No Ordinary Times, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the story of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, which I had been meaning to read for aeons – and bought a week or so ago. We seem to be back in those times, with a growing need for a new generation of leaders.

An extraordinary mood abroad, joyous even, with people waving in friendly fashion at the police helicopters overhead. Saw many banners I liked, but one placard I particularly liked suggested that we need a national cuppa tea and a quiet chat with all concerned.

Only after some minutes of following the placard did I realise that it was being carried by Sue Riddlestone of Bioregional. We walked together for the rest of the route, with a fair few people coming up to say how wonderful the banner was.

Amazingly, so great was the press of people it took us three hours just to get back to Hyde Park Corner. Some estimates put the number of marchers at around 700,000. It felt like it, though consistently good-tempered and milt-mannered.

Along the way I met a number of people I knew, including a friend from York and a couple of friends of my brother from Henley.

A remarkable display of the tolerance and good humour of ordinary Britons. The best of a country that Brexit so threatens. And a fantastic scrambling of the generations, albeit with a strong sense that it is the young who will ultimately pay the greatest price for the “Eton Mess” that Cameron, May and their ilk have been dragging us into in zombie-like fashion.

To Imperial For My Last TEST Board Meeting

Across to Imperial College this morning for my last Board meeting with The Ecological Sequestration Trust (TEST) and Resilience Brokers. I had resigned as part of a general tidying up of my board and advisory board memberships, but remain totally committed to the work of Peter Head and his team.

This has been my second TEST, given that the first grown-up job I had, back in 1974-78, was with John Roberts and TEST (Transport & Environment Studies).