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And then off to GRI in Amsterdam

Casper ter Kuile (in blue sweater) and his Harvard group at 2 Bloomsbury Place

Great session on 21 May with Casper ter Kuile, plus a group of his Harvard colleagues, followed almost immediately by a visit from Wendy Arenas Wightman, from Colombia. Then off to Amsterdam for the Global Reporting Initiative summit on 22-23 May, where I took part in a panel moderated by Jo Confino and otherwise including Pavan Sukhdev of TEEB, Sylvie Lemet of UNEP and Jochen Zeitz of The B Team. Great couple of days, including a dinner in a zoo (or rather an aquarium), and got to see and catch up with scores of friends and acquaintances, which was wonderfully energising.

The daily miracle of survival

At times, it seems that it is something of a war for cyclists in the nation’s capital. Over 38 years of London cycling, I had been left unconscious three times, twice with three broken ribs. That was until last night.

The first time was when I was hit by an Indonesian driver in Bow Street (his first day out on British roads; I only woke up to cracked ribs when I flew later that day to Cairo and tried to lie down to sleep in the hotel), again in the early 2000s when I was hit on a dark, rainy night in Lonsdale Road, Barnes, by someone who pulled out without warning, with no lights on, and drove off, leaving me in the road, and then again in 2006 – when a Mongolian woman (second day out on British roads) hit me at over 30 miles an hour in Olympia, while I was in a cycle lane. It turned out that she had been struggling to put a seat belt back on her daughter in the back seat, while continuing to drive at more than the speed limit.

I have been aggressively shunted from behind by a driver in Hammersmith, but to date nothing compares with last night – when three men rammed me from behind in Berwick Street, again leaving me semi-conscious in the roadway. We all have African origins, as was abundantly clear from my recent 23andMe genetic test results, but these three were more recent arrivals.

The incident started when one of them shouted at me as they arrived from behind at a set of lights. IAs the lights changed, I stopped to see what they were saying. At least one seemed to be inebriated, while a third in the back tried to calm the other two. Despairing of getting any sense out of them, I turned south into Berwick Street. There was a blast on a horn and then they rammed me from behind. I was off the bike, banged my head on the road – but luckily was wearing a helmet, which took the brunt of the impact. I lay for a couple of minutes semi-conscious while people gathered around.

Luckily, many of those who saw the incident came up to offer themselves as witnesses. Then, and perhaps I should have expected this, as soon as the road was cleared of my bike, the offending driver drove off. My sense is that at least one of the three men in the car was under the influence of drugs. No-one had initially got out of the car, apparently, but when the driver did he kept saying: “You were going slow, so I hit you.” It was clear to the witnesses that he had intended to. The impact damaged my back mudguard and smashed his front number plate, which was dangling into the road.

His car was small and black, and the license number was: BF55 VZG. Luckily, at least five of the witnesses had independently taken down the number. The police are coming this evening to take a second statement.

I had a damaged, bleeding ankle, butmanaged to cycle home, though the Dawes bike that has seen me through so many incidents was once again squeaking in complaint – and is in need of a good massage.

Eventually we must hope that London will be much safer for cyclists, but I suspect that will only be the case if we re-weight the legal balance. We should follow the Dutch model of making all drivers responsible for any accidents involving cyclists — and track down egregious offenders like those last night. As a minimum, they should be stopped from driving for a year and forced to retake the driving test.

90 and still up in the air

Tim in back seat of spotter plane Little Rissington from the air

Shortly after his 90th birthday, my father Tim has been up there again – this time doodling around the landscape at 80mph in the same sort of spotter plane that he was en route to fly over the planned Burma seaborne landings in 1945, but WWII ended when he was only part-way, in Ceylon, I think. And a perfectly horrid job it would have been, too, once again with a very high mortality rate for pilots as they puttered overhead the Japanese. The aircraft he was flown around Little Rissington in had a patched bullet hole in its fuselage, underscoring the point.

Wednesday, it must have been Riyadh

Pre-speakers Paul Hawken’s session Greenovation session, including Paul Hawken, Janine Benyus and Nick Parker Bill Clinton’s session Janine, Mabel and Sally

First time I have been in Saudi Arabia, as it was in Abu Dhabi. Fascinated by the region, but the real opportunity in Riyadh turned out to be time spent with the likes of Paul Hawken of OneSun Solar, Janine Benyus of the Biomimicry Guild, Nick Parker of the Cleantech Group, Sally Osberg of the Skoll Foundation and Mabel van Oranje of The Elders. Spent pretty much all the time in the Four Seasons Hotel, doing sessions and meeting people.

Chaired a plenary session with Fadi Ghandour of Aramex, Professor Wu Qing, People’s Deputy at the Beijing People’s Congress, and Magatte Wade of The Tiosanno Tribe. Magic moment when I greeted the audience with Salam alicum – and it seemed that the whole lot of them answered back. That said, it was clear that there remains a fair gap between the Saudis and the incomers on many of these agendas. Striking example was the Greenovation session, where the backdrop to several of those mentioned above was a series of centre-pivot irrigation systems, notorious for quarrying fossil water from aquifers.

Enormously impressive session by Bill Clinton, which had me tweeting energetically (@Volandia), but striking how he sucks the oxygen out of the surroundings. The session that followed his struggled to get airborne, with a constant flashing of cameras from behind the scenes where he was being feted. A bit like the electrical storm that flashed through last night, the rain still crashing down as I headed out to the airport today with a nice driver from Syria.

Flying visit to the Empty Quarter

Nightscape at Qasr al Sarab Dawn Dawn 2 Photo shoot after our session Off to get my bags Interior 1 Interior 2 Interior 3 Leaving 1 Leaving 2 Whale skull at Environment Agency Turtle skeleton at Environment Agency

Flew into Abu Dhabi via Sri Lanka, arriving late in the evening, and was then driven a couple of hours out into the Empty Quarter, to the Qasr al Aarab resort. Into bed in the early hours, then up for a session with Government Undersecretaries, alongside a Monitor/Global Business Network team, including Peter Schwartz. There had been fairly heavy rain during the night, which felt slightly strange in the desert. Plumes of black smoke erupted over distant dunes, where generators were being used to power the otherwise, on-the-surface squeaky clean resort. Then back into white SUV and sped back to Abu Dhabi city to do a session with Environment Agency. Then out to airport for flight first to Bahrain and then on to Riyadh.