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Arrival Stairway Towards sunset Herbaceous Greenhouse Church Wiston House Graveyard Farm tanks Path Roots Path 2 South Down Way Chanctonbury Ring Fort Beeches Panorama Panorama 2 Panorama 3 Fort disappearing On the way down

Down to Shoreham-by-Sea yesterday evening, then taxi out to Wilton Park to speak at their British-German Forum 2009.  The theme: Can we shape capitalism to suit our future?  Because I was speaking late today, after lunch I climbed up to Chanctonbury Ring – and its Iron Age hill fort, dating from around the 6th to 5th centuries BC.  Had been raining earlier, which made the ground very muddy and slippery in places, but the sun was out and the ascent was a joy.  

Reaching the top of Chanctonbury Hill, it was glorious to turn onto the South Down Way and make my way across the saddleback to the fort. Don’t know who planted the beeches up there, but they’re a wonder. Long-haired types wandering around the fort with a giant metal detector, but I was rapt by the views across to the North Downs in the north – and to the sea in the south.

From up there, Wilton Park looked tiny – seen across the back of a whirling buzzard. Semi-miraculous to be receiving email on my BlackBerry so high above the landscape. And, now I think of it, to be listening tot h likes of Elbow and Leo Kottke (oddly, it’s Rings) as I type this in to my Mac Book Pro.

Then back down to do my session – on the role of big business and on philanthrocapitalism – with Michael Green, co-author with Matthew Bishop of Philanthrocapitalism: How the rich can save the world and why we should let them.  We agreed on most things – and the debate after our presentations was very energetic. Regretted having to head back to the station and back into London, where storm clouds were piling up in purple black meringues.

Windows Geoffrey Halina Supported Border 1 Tim Border 2 Ian Border 3 Kate Malcolm Ian 2

By train down to Newdigate, near Dorking, for a meeting of the Trustees of the Environment Foundation – hosted by Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a former Trustee, and his wife Lucy. Wonderful to deliberate the shift of focus of the Foundation as it morphs into the Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development under its Director, Halina Ward, as woodpeckers, nuthatches and tits queued to feed on the pergola outside the kitchen. An extraordinary proliferation of butterflies as we worked. Halina and her sister are working on a revamp of the Foundation’s website, which will reposition us in a pretty major way later in the year.

Not all the Trustees could make it: we had Malcolm Aickin, Ian Christie, Kate Burningham, Tim O’Donovan and myself, as Chairman.  Later, as I waited at Dorking station with Halina, my phone went and it was the news I had been hoping from our C21 meeting last Monday. Invigorating.

Then back to London for the third birthday of Chinadialogue, held at the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Gray’s Inn Road, which I attended with Sam, and where I took the picture below on the top floor, which captures some of my love of wood grain.

 

Floor

 

Bad parent that I am, while Elaine went to Hania’s thirtieth birthday party, I found myself sitting in tropically warm, St James’s Palace, listening to Prince Charles on the Future – the latest Dimbleby Lecture.

While waiting under the Palace portico, I bumped into David Goodhart of our downstairs neighbours, Prospect magazine, who noted that 2 Bloomsbury Place was well represented.  Later, sitting next to Jonathon Porritt in the audience, I wasn’t aware that we were being filmed, but very shortly after got a number of emails from people who had spotted me/us.

Sympathised with much of the speech, though at times felt it was uncomfortably self-referential, when the Prince is actually part of a much larger, non-HRH-branded set of movements. It also felt slightly weird to be lectured on the need to move beyond materialism and consumerism in a setting of such extraordinary opulence.

Overall, however, we are privileged to have him as a champion of these wonderfully diverse issues and causes, all of which – as he noted – are struggling to move from the fringes to the mainstream.

VIrgin mural 1, with Homo volans at join between walls Virgin mural 2 – and again Virgin mural 3 Virgin Galactic bike

Virgin bike logo – with Homo volans at bottom

Spent the morning with Ale at Virgin Unite’s offices in Brook Green, talking with a team from Concordia 21. As I was coming in by bus over Hammersmith Bridge, I saw the most perfect heron, standing on a tiny island, its reflection stretching away on the water. Then, as Ale and I walked to the meeting, we passed Phoenix Lodge – and I mentioned that one possible model for the original phoenix was the giant heron of southern Egypt. Then, as we walked into the Virgin reception, I saw the mural showing Homo volans – and later, as we left, we passed a Virgin Galactic motorbike that had an wonderfully elegant rendition of Homo volans through to Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One. Quite a morning of symbolic serendipity.

Mervyn and Denise Hollyhocks

Spent the weekend in Amsterdam, with the Board of the Global Reporting Initiative. Exciting journey to Heathrow, with a driver who started off as the traffic lights turned from red to green, backwards into a line of traffic. And then his satellite navigation system kept telling him to go in the wrong direction, so I had to keep wading in to correct. Then the security people kept putting my bag through the scanner, because they could see a pair of scissors I didn’t know I had – Elaine had tucked them in at some point. Then I was sitting next to a screaming child on the flight out. And so it went. But the dinner on Saturday and the meeting today both went very well.