John Elkington

Yesterday was my fifty-ninth birthday, which Demon chose to celebrate by cutting off my Internet connection, so I had to spend much of the morning calling various points in India.  In the afternoon, Elaine and I went across to the Medici Gallery in Cork Street, where my sister Caroline has exhibited – and where today we bumped into one of my favourite artists, Paul Slater – and his wife Sophie.  They were in the process of helping to hang a new exhibition there, including a number of Paul’s paintings.  Oddly, I had emailed him a couple of days earlier, to see if a painting he had done for the Financial Times colour supplement was available for sale, but it had already gone.  Showed a woman in a diver’s suit, with a giant octopus behind, and she was drinking a glass of champagne, underwater.

Then we went on to the London Review of Books cafe (where we had a pot of the most delightful green tea) and thence to Roka, in Charlotte Street, where we had a perfectly glorious dinner with Gaia and Hania, before going on to see the latest Indiana Jones film.  Abominable plot, but the special effects were extraordinary. 

Then today the SustainAbility team surprised me with a birthday tea, to which Astrid (Sandoval) and Charmian (Love) of Volans also came.  Earlier, Sam (Lakha) had given me a wonderful green tea pot and – a wonderful idea – a blank canvas.  Will leave it blank, I think, and hang it on the walls at 2 Bloomsbury Place, and in a Dorian Grayish way hope that the filling in happens in the real world meanwhile.

Day 2 of our Volans team retreat continued in the spirit – and at the pace – of Day 1. The sense of team and organisational identity, purpose and action priorities is building apace. Another example of serenedipity today when we met someone else in the building who had come across our work from a very different angle, had decided to get in touch, but had no idea we were now neighbours. Rather more pictures of me today than is normal – or perhaps desirable – because Sam got hold of my camera. In the evening, we invited Will Rosenzweig of Physic Ventures to join us for dinner.

Martin and I Endangered strawberry Pamela and Charmian 1 Decompression 2 Martina and Elaine – by Sam, who was under the table Pamela and Charmian 2 Sam – if she had three hands would it be three phones? Decompression 1 Decompression 3 Decompression so deep that ‘the bends’ become a distinct possibility

A dozen of us (Charmian Love, Sam Gray, Martin Hartigan, Pamela Hartigan, Sam Lakha, Mark Lee, Geoff Lye, Astrid Sandoval, Kevin Teo, Sophia Tickell, Elaine and I) spent the day at 2 Bloomsbury Place, our new Volans office, the first of two Away Days. Part way through, Elaine spoke to someone from the Prospect office on the floor below – and discovered that, in addition to the building’s own garden, we have access to a quite extraordinary magic garden at the back, which – among many other delights – contains two elephant sculptures, presumably left by the people who were in our space before us, The Elephant Family.

Among many other memorable aspects of the day, and part from the Magic Garden, three stand out for me: the beautiful ‘stained glass’ version of our flying fish that Kim (Russell) had made for me; the one-candle birthday cake that emerged out of a cupboard late in the day, celebrating my imminent 59th and (in my mind) the birth of Volans Ventures; and the small granddaughter of the people upstairs coming down dressed as Ginger Rogers, one of my all-time favourite screen goddesses. (Flying Down to Rio being one of my Top 16 ‘Desert Island Discs’.)

Oh and then, as Elaine and I walked back home by Barnes Pond, in a setting sun that turned the trees and grass into a a form of sensuround stained glass, a heron (my totemic bird) flew in and and landed in the reed-beds. Apart from one piece of bad family news for one of our number during the day, this was virtual perfection.

Still life Sam, Astrid, Martin Flying fish 2 Flying fish 3 Elaine Garden Further in Elephants – with Sophia, Charmian and Sam Trunk fondling Sam in the belly of the beast Lock Wildflowers Martin emerges Kevin demonstrates Martin, me, Pamela Blowing out the candle Unused to cameras as I am …

Ian Keay forwarded me a fascinating New York Times article a couple of days back on R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller.  Fascinating to see how Fuller wove his own myth, consciously or not.  Ian had introduced me to Fuller’s work in the early 1960s, building geodesic domes out of matchsticks in his bedroom in Icomb.  Given my enthusiasm for these structures, our home in Barnes was lucky not to sprout a truly geodesic extension, since experience shows that they often leaked when put up by non-experts.  

I eventually met Fuller in Reykjavik in 1977, I think it was, and had breakfast with him.  Included some of that conversation in the article I wrote for New Scientist on the plane back to London – the first time I had to write against a really urgent deadline.  A fair bit of Fuller’s writing, which still occupies considerable shelf space at home, was pretty inaccessible.  Even so he had a profound impact on my thinking – whether or not he contemplated suicide on the Chicago waterfront one day in 1927, fully half a century before our paths crossed.  He died in 1983.

Wonderfully, Sam was finally able to pick up the keys for the new Volans office this morning, at 2 Bloomsbury Place. Estate agent has been typical of the breed, one of the rare life-forms one would gladly see nudged into extinction.  Has taken quite a while getting to this point – given that our initial visit with Elaine featured in an 18 March blog entry – but my sense is that having our own platform will make a significant difference for the wider Volans team.  

Through much of the day I worked with Astrid Sandoval, who was our Editor on The Power of Unreasonable People at Harvard Business Press, and is now doing an MBA at IESE, Barcelona, and London Business School.  Very useful session where she probed me on my ambitions for Volans – and we began to craft new language around our tagline and mission statement.  May or may not survive our two Volans away days on Thursday and Friday this week, but felt like real progress.  A set of seed crystals to drop into the saturated solution.