Journal

I have literally lost count of the scores of keynotes and speeches I have done in recent months, but one that stands out – and I was reminded of it by an email today – was India’s first Green Literature Festival, where I did the opening speech on Wednesday 10th December. A fireside chat format, with Santhosh Jayaram, Global Head – Sustainability, at HCL Technologies Limited.

Did that from home, then made my way into Somerset House for Christmas celebration with the team. We had three competing teams playing Hidden City‘s Hunt for the Cheshire Cat. I played along for a couple of hours, but then my persistent cough got the better of me and I unhooked. Bt not before I had enjoyed many aspects of the hunt, including finding the blackbirds in Leicester Square:

Went back to Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, where the hunt had briefly taken us earlier and, unexpectedly, bumped into Elaine – who had been meant to meet us later in the evening at St Katharine’s Docks.

We went back to Somerset House a little later to meet up with the team and then catch the Uber boat down to the Tower. Glorious London-at-night spectacle and wonderful to walk by the Tower and into St Katharine’s.

We started with a drink at The Dickens Inn, before moving across to Kilikya, a delightful Turkish restaurant overlooking the dock itself. Then into a taxi back to Barnes and Richmond with Louise and Mark Roper, the latter having organised the day.

My review of Paul Hawken‘s stunning new book, ‘Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation’ appears on Medium today: https://medium.com/@volansjohn/hiding-seeds-in-our-hair-25a4034b038e…. Wanted to post before #GreenSwans Bookclub session tomorrow: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqf-moqT0pHtEI86zT1GDt9IZIi_HdgvE8…. Delighted to say that the EU and Commonwealth edition ends with an afterword from me.

The International Society of Sustainability Professionals has posted my piece on the generational aspects of the COP26 climate summit.

Spoke yesterday at IESE, the Madrid-based business school. An annual event for their 50,000-strong alumni network, this time focusing on sustainability. Some time since I have been to their campus and was impressed by their new complex of buildings, in which the event was housed. Met some great people who I plan to follow up with.

Then today I went walkabout in Madrid. Among the places I visited were CentroCentro (whose exhibitions I found somewhat muddy and disappointing), the Prado Museum (whose collection blew me away) and the Sorolla Museum (ditto).

Looking at the Prado exhibits through the eyes of Asian visitors I was following around at one point, it struck just how much of a death cult Catholicism has been, with assorted martyrdoms including everything from crucifixions, to arrows and rocks.

Pieter Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death was a painful reminder of just how brutish life could be in medieval times. And Goya’s execution images and Black Paintings rubbed the point in for recently modern times.

The religious painter whose work has always leaped out for me – and did so again today – is El Greco. Weird, extruded, exquisite. Plus I liked Flevit Super Ilam by Enrique Simonet Lobado. Plus some of the royal portraits, amid all the assorted thuggery and ugliness, were striking – including the Velasquez renderings of Philippe III and Felipe IV.

But there were real delights in the midst of it all, too, including several Sorolla paintings, with Boys on a Beach particularly eye-catching. I was so taken by them that, having turned away from a long queue outside the Sorolla Museum in the morning (it is only 7 minutes from my hotel), I went back there – to find no queue at all around 16.00, and entry free.

A really joyous place with a stunning collection of his paintings, including the bathing horse and women walking on a beach.

COPO26 proved to be an extraordinary gathering of the tribes. In one session alone, hosted by Federated Hermes, there were six people I had worked with over the years, from Julia Hailes and Fran(cesura) Dixon van Dijk, through Char(mian) Love and Clover Hogan, to two present-day members of the team: Louise Kjellerup Roper and Richard Roberts.

The buzz from all of that helped offset the impact of the helicopter that hovered directly overhead throughout my session. Here’s one I took later, during the Fridays4Future march.