Journal

Detail of Regine Hagerdorn’s Rosiers  

This week was meant to be something of a break, but I have been working pretty much flat out, with Volans doing a major email out to our contacts around the world – which has had me respnding to hundreds of email replies.  Have also been working on a column for Director magazine, an article I’m co-authoring with Mark Lee and the WEC project.  So this morning Elaine dragged me off to Kew Gardens, to give me a bit of exercise and get some fresh air in my lungs.  And what a wonderful treat it was.

High points included (literally) the new aerial walkway and (aesthetically) the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art.  hadn’t thought I much liked botanical paintings, but there were many  would have gladly grabbed off the walls here and run away with.  Did buy Shirley Sherwood’s book A Passion for Plants, for its reproductions of many of the more recent paintings in the collection.  One of the ones I liked best was by Regne Hagerdorn, Rosiers.  It showed a series of different rose stems — and to my eye looked like a botanical score for some form of music that you would need some form of kinesthesia to hear.

Aerial walkway 1   Aerial walkway 2   Chestnut leaf-miner   Leaf-miners 2   Walkway surface   Temperate House   Elaine, aerially   Walkway again   Support   Elaine and metal tree   Walkway embraces   Fall leaves 1   Shirley Sherwood   Fungi   Fall leaves 2   Carved stomata   Sculptural version of a tree root

Working away in my study today this morning, I turned around to see a beautiful dog fox fast asleep on our neighbour Bruce McLean’s studio roof, its bottom tucked into a clump of bamboo.  Elaine missed it, because she was out at the farmers’ market, but when she went out again to the cheese shop and returned, he obliged by putting in a repeat appearance.

Studio siesta

Felt rocks

Sam unpacked a box that arrived from SustainAbility’s US team today – and proved to contain, within some extraordinary concertina packaging, 21 coloured felt pebbles or rocks. This was in celebration of the 21 years I had spent at SustainAbility before launching Volans, in which SustainAbility now has a 10% stake. A dangerous gift. Soon the Volans team were attracting each others’ attention by letting fly with felt missives.

The final image of the trio below surfaced when I told Charmian about my serendipitous encounter with Tom Pakenham of Green Tomato Cars on my way home from the ACME Climate Change Campaign event. She promptly puled out a scrap of paper that she had torn from a copy of the Volans Flyer, to capture a set of contact details at the same event. And the world that had come with the tear was Serendipity.

Far from blue: Sam unwraps rocks   Charmian’s jelly beans have drifted my way   Serendipity, again

Quite a day, kicking off with a film crew arriving at Volans to grill me on sustainable cities, then a trip across to Accenture, then a Tube trip back during which I spotted one of the posters for the new ACME Climate Action campaign launched by Provokateur, then several other meetings, then a session at SustainAbility on Brazil, then on with Charmian (Love) to an event at Home House to celebrate the launch of the ACME campaign – and accompanying book published by Fourth Estate.  Also profiled at the event was the new TAP campaign for tap water.  Nice to catch up with Josh Blackburn, agent provokateur, and a bunch of other mischief makers.  

Walked back to Hyde Park Corner, where I made my way down to the Tube platform, at which point Serendipity swung into action once again when I spotted someone with a TAP brochure and said hello.  Turned out to be Tom Pakenham, Chief Executive of Green Tomato Cars – someone I had planned to chase down (or is it up?) for a while.  When I looked at his card more closely when i got home, I was beside myself to see they’re housed at Serendib House!

Homo volans in moat

Flew to Schipol on Sunday – then train to Leiden – for my first Board meeting with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).  Held in a little castle with a moat.  Outgoing Board members included Born Stigson of WBCSD and Judy Henderson, who I first knew when she was with Oxfam.  Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel, long an ally when she ran the UNEP’s trade, industry and economics department in Paris, was also due to step down – but has mercifully agreed to stay n for a year until the new head of the Paris office has the time to take over.

I confess I was feeling fairly down about the prospects of such initiatives to survive the impending financial storm, let alone thrive and drive the level of change needed in the world.  But an impending KPMG survey suggests that the GRI approach to sustainability reporting continues to make major inroads around the world.  And I have been asked back in September to explore new business models for GRI, which could be interesting.

More positively still, the moat had a wonderful statue of a birdman, a combination of a heron (my lucky bird) and a human figure.  Homo volans, whatever the sculptor may have labelled the piece.  I got my shoes very wet creeping around through the grass to catch a picture of a real heron that had alighted behind the statue, but maned the trick. 

Later, I had to wait 7-8 hours at Schipol to catch a flight home, because my rock-bottom fare tied me to a late night flight, but I used the time to read I bought in Schipol, The Nuremberg Interviews, by Leon Goldensohn – an American psychiatrist wh interviewed two dozen leaders of the Third Reich who were charged with carrying out genocide.  They included Hans Frank, Hermann Goering and Joachim von Ribbentrop. 

A very different form of accountability, but absolutely fascinating.  And sickening how George W. Bush, Dick Cheney et al have managed to undermine the legacy of those who fought to ensure new forms of global justice.

Spiral at gate   Equine reception   Reflection   Guinea fowl in conference   Homo volans 1   Homo volans 2   Homo volans 3   Light and sunset