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Shadowing: not my bike

I got to cycle quite a lot this week, though the day of the Tube strike was a little straining, with everyone and their pony out on the streets – or at least I did pass one female cyclist in Hyde Park who was wearing a horse riding helmet. The borisbikes are now everywhere – and I can’t help seeing them as a stroke of urban genius, though I suspect the bus drivers are finding it all a bit of a strain.

Made the mistake of crowing to Elaine that I would be able to ride into the office every day of the week, with Thursday slated for a filming session with me arriving on my bike, but then as I headed home on Friday my inner tube suffered a catastrophic puncture in Great Marlborough Street. I tried riding on the rim for a bit, but London roads are now so eaten up that I felt I would destroy the machine – so hailed a taxi, driven by a white-haired Irishman, who kindly drove me home.

Then, yesterday, as a result, I got to go to one of my favourite places, a nearby bike shop in Putney, Holdsworth’s, which has an interesting history. Back tyre is now triple-armoured with Kevlar, or so I’m told.

As I said to Sam (Lakha) in a text later in the day, one thing I like about such places is the sense of a “sincere belief in something, in this case the descendants of the velocipede. There’s a humbling purity about it. And it must have been the same watching your horse being re-shoed at the farrier’s. Different smell – horse, hay, leather, tobacco, urine, burning chitin – but the same complex, slightly dangerous pungency as when hanging around the blacksmith’s on the edge of town. For us as children in Ireland, it was the next-door farm, and in Nicosia it was the local brickworks.”

Sam and I agree we like workshops. As for my own workshop, I have been working this week on the building blocks for around 10 slide presentations, for conferences in Australia and Brazil, something that has taken an unconscionable time – but will no doubt stand me in good stead for later events once finished.

When Jim Salzman arrived from the States early this morning, he took a look at me and said I looked tired. True, I do. But am also suffering from an attack of eczema on my cheeks, which aggravates the effect – and often denotes too long spent hunched over a steaming laptop. But enjoyed a lovely sunset last night, as the world pondered the meaning of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. (See previous posting.)

Wildest moment of the week, though, was probably the moment when four of us were sitting in the office in Bloomsbury Place – and suddenly my age-old nightmare of a plane flying through the roof, or at least into the garden, seemed imminent as an aero engine seemed to go into screaming overdrive. Looked out the window – and saw the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight fly past, or at least the Lancaster and Spitfire. They had come in very low, apparently to mark the first day of the Blitz 70 years ago. Concentrated the mind wonderfully.

Sunset: 9/11

 

Elaine and Jim walking around the Leg of Mutton Reservoir Wasp nest Advertising moment A dying white poplar A distant police boat under Barnes Bridge

Took a leisurely walk around Barnes and the Leg of Mutton Reservoir with Jim Salzman, who flew in from the States this morning, ahead of my flight to Buenos Aires this evening. At one point, he noted a wasp’s nest dangling just over my head. Reminded me of the hornet’s nest I posted a picture of from Cape Cod when just starting this blog series, in 2003.

Otherwise have more or less finished the slide deck from which I will draw down presentations in the coming months – but it’s currently around 50 MB, which is slightly Gargantuan. Odd how foxes are becoming day-time creatures: saw one loitering in the street as we walked back.

Inside the South London Botanical Institute Garden 1 Garden 2 Nature Room Halina and Ian

Took a minicab across to Tulse Hill this morning, with a driver who had been one of Vietnam’s Boat People. He was part of a group of people trying to leave the country in 1979, but they got into difficulties and split up at the quay, so he was the only one of his family group that got onto the boats. The rest of his family apparently ended up in re-education camps for two years. Like the Afghani driver who drove me across to Volans with a set of pictures a couple of weeks ago, a man who had fought alongside the Russians, my Vietnamese driver says he was very well treated by the British immigration authorities when he got here.

Finding the South East Botanical Institute proved a little mystifying, but the driver stuck with the task – and the morning was beautiful. I was on my way to chair a meeting of the Trustees of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), but had sadly missed the first half day yesterday, because of my last-moment trip to Vevey. Luckily, Ian Christie, as Deputy Chair, has stepped in.

As a result of my Vevey jaunt, I had missed two outbound Trustees, Tim O’Donovan (who had been with the Environment Foundation since the get-go) and Jane Nelson (who had joined alongside Sir Geoffrey Chandler when I took over as Chairman, deep in the mists of pre-history). Dr Malcolm Aickin (another Trustee who had been there from the beginning, indeed from before that) did make it today, though he has also stood down as a Trustee, in line with our rules on tenure.

One highlight of the day was that Professor Janos Zlinsky, Head of Strategy for Hungary’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, joined us as the first of what we intend will be a new crop of (more international) Trustees – and, as a result, we spent quite a bit of the time debating the different ways in which governments have been trying to ensure that the voices of future generations are heard (or at least their potential needs considered) in today’s politics and decision-making.

The Library at the Institute dates back to 1910 – and the smell of old books, the dark, heavy wooden furniture, the book-crowded walls and the pendulant frilly glass lights put me in mind of spiritualism sessions in the aftermath of WWI, enhanced by the fact that one or two of the Trustees greeted certain decisions by rapping on the table-top, in the continental style of applause.

Was fascinated to discover that the Institute was founded by Allan Octavian Hume, whose extraordinary story I hadn’t previously come across directly. But I had bought some time ago a book, The Great Hedge of India, that described Hume’s role in the creation of one of the most extraordinary features of the British Raj, the living customs line designed to enforce the invidious salt tax. How extraordinary, then, that Hume – who was eventually dismissed from the Civil Service because he was too independent and honest, became one of the founders of the Indian Congress Party, and was even featured on an Indian postal stamp.

Hume also turns out to have been a champion of using firewood plantations to allow manure to go back to the land, of women’s rights, of an end to infanticide and enforced widowhood, and – in the immediate aftermath of what some call the Indian Mutiny and others the Indian Rebellion or the first War of Independence – of the merciful treatment of Indians at a time when the British were struggling to get back into the saddle, and were generally looking for revenge.

In addition to Hume’s passion for plants, that crystallised out in the Institute, he was profoundly knowledgeable about birds. His first collection was apparently destroyed during the terrors of 1857, then a later collection of books and samples was destroyed when a servant sold it as waste paper. In a third round of destruction, a further 20,000 samples were destroyed before the remnant of his vast ornithological collection made its way to the British Museum, just along the road from where Volans now roosts.

Given that groups of schoolchildren visit the Institute, there is a nice future generations line of sight back to the values and work of Hume. Also nice to see a Ginkgo biloba in the front garden, planted by a former Curator, William Sherrin (1871-1955)one of my favourite trees. One other highlight of the day was filming an interview by Ian of Janos, using the Flip camera the team gave me last year for my sixtieth birthday. The quality of the images is stunning – though the size of the resulting file is enormous, and I still have to work out how to transfer easily to Halina to post on the FDSD website.

Jieying’s fish illuminated

Got back to 2 Bloomsbury Place from the FDSD meeting to find the setting sun illuminating the embroidered picture of counter current fish that (Zheng) Jieying gave me earlier in the year, based on the theme of this website. The extraordinary threadwork spotlighted for all to see.

Seahorses in Lake Geneva/Lac Léman Skateboarder goes horizontal Lac Léman 2 Lac Léman 3 Inside-out view from Nestlé I prefer to bite them rather than sit on them Not quite full frontal

By plane and train this morning to Vevey in Switzerland, to see Nestlé. Spent several hours discussing the sustainability agenda with José Lopez (Executive Vice President, Operations), Niels Christensen and Claus Conzelmann of Nestlé, and Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria and another member of the Nestlé Creative Shared Value Advisory Board.