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Daylight Saving Time ensures a leisurely start top the day. Took a delightful Sunday stroll around the Leg O’Mutton Reservoir between the Thames and Lonsdale Road, with the fall colours beginning to take root. One of my favourite places – and little known, it would seem. Makes me think of Walden Pond, in its tucked away way.

Quite a week, all told. It started with my chairing a kick-off plenary session for the Critical Mass event at the Royal Institution. In the wonderful Faraday Theatre.

My panellists on the theme of ‘Achieving Critical Mass’ were Antony Bugg-Levine (CEO, Nonprofit Finance Fund), who kindly informed the audience that I was “a legend,” Marcelino Castrillo (MD of business banking at RBS), Diana Verde Nieto (CEO of PositiveLuxury.com, where I am on the advisory board), Rodney Irwin (responsible for WBCSD’s sustainability reporting program) and Jan Owen (CEO, Foundation for Young Australians). Great audience interaction.

Then back to office to prepare for upcoming speeches, followed by a Guardian event featuring Bill Bryson at the Emmanuel Centre in the evening.

Next day, off  by train to Ely and then, with Mark Barthel, across to a huge mushroom farm that supplies Tesco. We were there for an advisory board meeting, but it was a great opportunity to peer back through the supply chain. Very professional and welcoming operation.

Lise Kingo’s last meeting, now that she has taken over the UN Global Compact. And great to see her old company, Novo Nordisk, a long-time Triple Bottom Line pioneer, taking the No. 1 slot in a ranking of 100 CEOs, with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos tumbling down the rankings.

Then picked up by car and driven to Stansted for flight to Rome. Driven by Martin Ott of Green Air Cars (“a premium car service that doesn’t cost the Earth”) – and for the duration of the trip we talked about everything from climate change and his use of hybrids and, potentially, Teslas, through to 20th century aviation, including the first (piston-powered) Comets, Mosquitos and (his favourite) Hurricanes.

Then a much delayed RyanAir flight to Rome, arriving well after midnight, after which I headed across to the hotel – waking early for a breakfast meeting with Michael Meehan, who now heads the Global Reporting Initiative. Next, across to Enel’s HQ for the Future of Sustainability Reporting event, kicked off by Enel CEO Francesco Starace, who was very impressive indeed. Will be mentioned in my next round of blogs.

Did a lively  panel session moderated by Nelmara Arbex, including speakers such as professor Enrico Giovannini of the University of Rome and Greenpeace Italy executive director Giuseppe Onufrio. Intrigued by Amy Zalman’s keynote: she is CEO and president of the World Future Society, based in Washington, D.C. Happily, it looks as if she will be through London in a few weeks.

Then a dangerously fast car (not my choice) out to the airport and back to London, for an early start on Thursday morning, when I did a panel session for the Social Stock Exchange in the Dutch Hall in the City. Lovely building and great conference venue. Panel moderated by Dorothy Maxwell and included people like Nick Robins (who I worked with some 20 years ago, currently with UNEP), Daniela Saltzman of the Generation Foundation, Tomás Carruthers (CEO, Social Stock Exchange) and Iain Richards (head of responsible investment, Columbia Threadneedle Investments).

Thence to Paddington for the train to Bristol, European Green City of the Year, 2015, where I was chairing two panel sessions at their business summit. My panel featured Craig Sams (co-founder of firms like Whole Earth Foods and Green & Black’s, and now involved in a locally based biochar firm, Carbon Gold), Nina Skorupska (CEO of the Renewable Energy Association) and Frits Verheij (DNV’s director of Smart Green Cities).

We ran the session twice, then attended a session featuring Sir Randolph Fiennes (highly polished, but it’s a wonder he’s still alive). Called on by Jon Dee to do a filmed TV panel discussion for Sky News in Australia, then a feedback session on the day’s sessions, where I was on stage with Bristol Mayor George Ferguson.

He repeated the thought that had struck me in an earlier discussion session after the première of Danny Boyle’s new Steve Jobs film last Sunday – that just as Jobs encouraged the world to ‘Think Different,’ we should encourage the world to ‘Think Bristol.’ I can see why it appeared!

Next a dinner ahead of the following day’s City Leadership Summit, featuring a wonderful talk from Tim Smit of The Eden Project. He spotted me working ahead of that, partly because the noise in the bar was so intense, and noted that I was one of the hardest-working people he knew.

A case of the pot and kettle, I think.

Then on Friday morning, I followed George Ferguson onto the stage to do a keynote based on the theme of a GreenBiz blog I did a while back, encouraging CEOs and Mayors to work together to address climate change.

The fourth speech in the series was by Lord Rees, the Royal Astronomer. First time I had a chance to talk to him properly. He gave me a personalised copy of his book Our Final Century, inserting by hand the question-mark after the title that he says his UK publishers chose to omit.

And then, finally, onto the train back to Paddington, enjoying the sight of the Uffington Horse along the way. Worked on a background note for Covestro ahead of a call with them on Monday. A sense of wonder as Sam and I talked at a Paddington café, with a wayward pigeon tearing at left-over food, that I had made it through the week.

It’s odd what you can learn about your parents later in life. Talking to my mother, Pat, this morning, I discovered a new wrinkle in a story about my father, Tim, which I thought I knew quite well. It started, at least for me, when I was called in by the headmistress at prep school to be told that Tim had been involved a severe car crash.

It was the early 1960s and he had been driving at 100 mph, as was his wont, somewhere in  the West Country. In his Rover 3-litre, he managed to avoid a lorry that lumbered out in front of him, no doubt misjudging the speed of the oncoming car. Not everyone drives like ex-Battle of Britain pilots.

But then Tim over-steered and his rear end caught an oncoming white van, which was full of china. The noise can be imagined. He was thrown clear of the car (no seat belts in those days) and it surged ahead into a different country, smashing through a field gate and releasing a number of horses along the highway.

Taken to hospital, he apparently drove the nursing staff mad – they said he had been climbing the walls. One of the medical staff asked Pat if Tim’s skull was normally shaped that way and, somewhat later, after he had been discharged, it turned out that he had a 9-inch crack in his skull. So back to hospital.

I got to all that this morning when I asked Pat when this hyperactive man of ours had started to take afternoon rests, something I like to do at the weekend. Apparently it was after that crash. He had been prescribed rest – and found he rather liked it.

What I hadn’t know was that at the time of the crash he had a loaded Browning automatic, which he had worn constantly for self defence when we were in Cyprus in the late 1950s, stashed away in the car’s glove department. Pat told me that it was illegal, Tim  retorted that he had a licence.

Then Pat added another piece of in formation I hadn’t heard. When Tim was in Russia during the WWII, teaching the Russians to fly Hurricanes, he was known as ‘Krupps,’ because he always wore his own gun, that he had bought for the purpose.

One lives, sometimes, and learns, sometimes.

There’s a first time for everything, and tonight was the first time I had trod the fabled red carpet – as we made our way into the Leicester Odeon for the Closing Gala of the BFI London Film Festival. The film that closed out the Festival: Steve Jobs. And this was a hat-trick for film-maker Danny Boyle, in that his earlier films Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours had closed in previous years.

The stars were out in force this evening, including film-maker Danny Boyle, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the big name actors like Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. And it was wonderful to watch them – Kate Winslet in particular – engage their audiences from the red carpet.

Result? Red carpet or no, Steve Jobs made it into my Top 5 films, ever.

Full disclosure: the tickets came via our eldest daughter Gaia and her boss, Christian Colson. She has worked with Christian and Danny more or less since the outset of the Slumdog Millionaire project. So interest declared, but I wouldn’t have said the same about Slumdog or 127 Hours. Loved both of them, but for me Steve Jobs was a stand-out production.

I was amazed how many people, including some of the cast, said they hadn’t known much about Jobs. I have bought Apple computers since the first Macintosh, which was the second computer Gaia and her sister Hania owned, after an Amstrad. The difference between the two machines was beyond measure, something delightfully captured in an early sequence with Jobs’s daughter Lisa, who unwittingly uses the machine to begin the long, Himalayan climb into her father’s heart.

The relationship between Jobs and his muse Joanna (Kate Winslet) is tough, challenging, loving, magical. Sir Jony Ive may say he doesn’t recognise Michael Fassbender’s version of Jobs, but hey, this is like a painting – a metaphor Jobs himself was apparently inclined to use.

And as a painting it’s a work of art, a work of collective genius.

As it happens, the only time I came across Sir Jony was at a conference where he was being interviewed by Al Gore, an Apple Board member. I asked a question about Apple’s problems with Foxconn in China – and I can only describe his reply as tetchy.

On the other hand, I recall, many moons ago, being alongside Steve Wozniak (played in the film by Seth Rogen) as our bags came off a flight at Heathrow, and he radiated warmth. In fact, he reminded me of Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, who I like and admire greatly.

I have no idea if the central collision between Jobs and Woz in this film was fiction or reality, but it rang true – and my sympathies were pretty much entirely with Woz.

But eggs and omelettes. Omelettes and chips. Jobs was a true, if flawed genius – in the film he admits that in certain respects he is “ill-made.” But that’s a key part of what makes him – and Danny Boyle’s film – so riveting. Red carpet or no, go.

 

Quite a week, though not quite up to the one to come. Great Shell Foundation conference in Docklands on Monday. Theme: ‘Accelerating the Growth of “High-Impact” Markets to Serve Low-Income Communities.’ Caught up with a number of people I hadn’t seen for ages, but also met some fascinating new folk, including some at the reception later in the evening on the 30-somethingth floor of their Canary wharf tower, overlooking the wonders of London, the Thames and a setting sun almost worthy of the Impressionists.

Wednesday included a great session with Richard Northcote and Stefan Koch of Covestro, c/o Futerra. Then, later in the day, a trip across to the National Portrait Gallery for an exhibition of the work of Alberto Giacometti, always one of my favourite artists. Invitation followed on from a conversation I had had in a car home (after the Crowd event dinner covered earlier) with Andrea Sullivan of Bank America Merrill Lynch, who are sponsoring the exhibition.

Elaine and I had to race around the exhibits after the speeches, though am utterly determined to go back, in order to be away in time to get to Notting Hill and a quite stunning dinner hosted by Peter Wheeler, now of the Nature Conservancy. It featured readings by a long-time friend, Jeanne-Marie Gescher, from her new book, All Under Heaven: China’s Dreams of Order (Kaduna House, 2015).

On Thursday I chaired an ‘away day’ session with the Admissions Panel of the Social Stock Exchange, working through how we best manage the growing number of applications to SSX. Then a dinner with SSXAP members around the corner from the Royal Exchange.

Yesterday, Saturday, was flat out getting speeches done for next week, when I give 6, and my diary takes me to places as diverse as Ely, Rome and Bristol.

Today, am just off a Skype call with Peter-David Pedersen, a conversation beamed directly into a Tokyo conference of next generation leaders who are now part of NELIS – which stands for Next Leaders’ Initiative for Sustainability. In my comments, I drew on some of the work we did some years back around the idea of a Future Quotient.

And then, this evening, thanks to an invitation from Gaia, it’s off to a premiere of Danny Boyle’s new Steve Jobs film, ahead of a week that I can hardly bring myself to think about …