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Quite a week. Apart from anything else, there have been the chemical and cruise missile attacks in Syria. Meanwhile, the skies have been blue and my social calendar has been in overdrive.

Monday involved a trip across to Oxford and the Skoll World Forum, for an evening in celebration of the Pamela Hartigan. Tuesday, after a seminar by Adrian Gault (Chief Economist, Committee on Climate Change) at UCL on the UK Carbon Budget, involved a delightful dinner with Paul Ekins. Then Friday evening took us to Zédel with two cousins. And last night was a much quieter evening (including padded walls) at the new Keeper’s House restaurant under the Royal Academy of Arts, this time with Debra Dunn.

And through it all I have been reading an astonishing novel, Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End. Remarkable use of language – and existentially unsettling insights into the horror of the wresting of the Old West from the tribes that had made them home.

Then, on our way home on the Sunday, we decided to drop off at Chanctonbury Ring. Weirdly, as we climbed up through the hangings towards the top and the South Down Way, I keep having a profound sense of déjà vu. It was only when we reached to very top that it suddenly struck me that I had been here before, some eight years ago, when speaking at nearby Wilton Park.

Here are some images from this time around:

After chairing a session of the Social Stock Exchange Admissions Panel, I raced home and then we drove south – for a dinner in Lewes with Carlota Perez. Recently LSE Centennial Professor, she is an authority on long-wave economic cycles of the sort studied by Nikolai Kondratiev.

A delightful evening at a nearby Thai restaurant, providing an insight on why Carlota and I seemed to differ in terms of the periodicity of the fading and building waves – but are simply using slightly different lenses to view the same phenomena.

En route to the restaurant, as we were trying to find somewhere to pay for parking by the train station, someone called my name – and it turned out to be Oliver Dudok van Heel, who used to work with SustainAbility, with his 7-year-old barefoot daughter.

We had dropped off our luggage on the way to Lewes at Old Whyly, a delightful boutique B&B that Hania and Jake had stayed at last year. Very taken with it all, particularly our hostess, Sarah Burgoyne.

Among places we visited over the next couple of days was Charleston, country home of the Bloomsbury Set, and somewhere often frequented by Molly March, who I grew up with in Cyprus – and would later marry Nick, son of Peggy Ashcroft and  Jeremy Hutchinson.

I had always thought I didn’t like Bloomsbury art, but viewed in context and in an ensemble, I think I could begin to see what they were aiming for …

 

https://johnelkington.com/2017/04/10628/

2017 has been fairly frenetic, but despite – or perhaps because of – Brexit and Trumpism, work has been going like gangbusters. Marches included my annual lectures at Imperial College (where I was accompanied by Lauren Cervino, who is anchoring our Carbon Productivity work) and UCL (ditto Florence Isaacs, who has been a member of the team before heading off to do her PhD in Antarctica).

I’m travelling a bit less at the moment, albeit with a burst of trips to places like Israel and India now in immediate prospect. But I did fly to Norway (Oslo, then Kristiansand), with Geoff Kendall of the Future Fit Foundation, to speak at a conference organised by the Strømme Foundation.

The event was chaired by John G. Bernander, a former CEO of Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and of NHO, the main organisation for Norwegian employers. He has also been an MP for the Conservative Party. he was on the same flight in – indeed helped me get my luggage out of the overhead bin. A good start!

Philosopher Henrik Syse, who is a member of the Nobel Committee and former head of the Ethical Board for the Norwegian Pension Fund, also spoke.  We had met when I was in Oslo last year. Fascinating to hear a truly philosophical view on business responsibility.

Other speakers included Christian Thommessen of ResponsAbility. He works  closely with Stephen Brenninkmeijer, as do I at the Social Stock Exchange. And, as I was coming back through Heathrow later in the day, who should take my arm but Thomas Brenninkmeijer.

My latest blog for GreenBiz imagines the day when nano-drones come for my job as Chief Pollinator. But still a long way from being the hottest issue sizzling around my brainpan.