Journal

All I want is the paper and the ribbons Ditto

Gaia and Hania came across today, bearing gifts – including a box of two wonderful red wines: Bohorquez 2005 from Spain, and Pleiades XVI, made by Sean Thackeray in Bolinas, California. As one wine retailer says of the latter, “Named for the Pleiades star cluster (also called the Seven Sisters) this wine is a blend of syrah, sangiovese, mourvèdre, barbera, carignane, petite sirah and viognier, among others. Thackrey blends by taste and doesn’t keep track of the fruit that ends up in each blend so it’s different from year to year. Juicy fruit, earth and Thackrey’s signature eucalyptus note.”  Haven’t go to that yet, but a glorious day – am inclining to having my 60th birthday every year.

Chicory Salmon Gaia’s shoes Violet molasses cake

Like the late Peter Townsend, but less directly, Ralf Dahrendorf was a prominent feature in the landscape when I was doing my BA and M.Phil. But I have had a lot more pleasure from Huey Long, whose obituary appears in The Times today, who has just died at the age of 105 – and who played for eight months in 1945 with one of my favourite musical groups, the Inkspots. Lovely face. Played all the tracks on my IPod this morning in celebration of his passing.  Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, which also features Ella Fitzgerald, is one of the tracks on the compilation of music I had already recorded to play on Monday evening.

The Value Web poster (sorry about the quality of this version of the image)

Now displayed both on the walls of 2 Bloomsbury Place and on the Value Web website, this grainy version of the poster mentioned in the previous post is the most extraordinary birthday missive I think I have ever had. And certainly the biggest. Will aim to post a better image next week when the masterwork has been formally launched.

Patrin and Sam @ work

After breakfast with colleagues from Singapore’s Economic Development Board, who are a strategic partner of ours at Volans, I walked back to the office to finish off some writing, do a couple of meetings and then begin tidying up ahead of Monday. One of the things I did was to pin up all the painting and drawings that an American teacher, Vicki Wade, had sent me – done by her class in Alexandria, Virginia, on the basis on our long-ago book for children, Going Green. Fabulous images, thoughts and sentiments.  She and successive generations of her students have done this each year for absolute ages.

Patrin (Watanatada) came over to help pinning up the pictures – and, by accident, I got a glimpse of something Sam and others had been working on for me with The Value Web. Six Value Web artists had conspired together to produce an extraordinary rendering of my life and character, though I have to say that when Ale and Sam took the wraps off the analysis seemed to be unduly forgiving of my foibles. But enormously moving, even so.

Sam captions James Parr, Sam and I Sam reflects Patrin and Ale With one of the paintings done by Vicki Wade’s children in Alexandria, VA The great unveiling Drinking it in

Flew in from Sao Paulo this afternoon, via TAM, after a few days at the annual Instituto Ethos conference on corporate social responsibility. I did a panel session yesterday, chaired by Simon Zadek of AccountAbility and also featuring Fernando Martins of Grupo Santander and Ricardo Henriques, advisor to the President of BNDES, the Brazilian Development Bank. Our session was enitled: ‘Global Crisis: Can a new financial system drive the economy towards a sustainable society?’ My central question was whether the government-moderated economic crisis will be enough to spur transformative changes in our basic economic model – too early to say, but sadly maybe not. Then a very interesting meeting with several people from Braskem. The previous evening, took part in a wonderful dinner with the members of the International Board of Ethos.