Journal

Courtesy of BBC

Just watched Andrew Marr present two quite stunning programmes, on BBC1 and BBC2, the first on Britain from Above, the second on London ditto.  Seeing the pulsing webs of energy, telecommunications and road, air and sea traffic reminded me of the ecosystemic perspectives on landscapes and cities that first drew me to planning in the early 1970s – and then the Abercrombie Plan sequences in the London programme reminded me of some of the reasons why I fled the discipline once I had my M. Phil. 

The sequences of London’s Docklands at the same time prompted memories of my solo jaunts around the derelict docks, with my Leica M3, including one early morning horror where I found myself alone in an area of warehousing, triangulated upon by three guard-dogs – two Alsatians and a Doberman.  I had to stand in the same spot for an unconscionable time before their owner arrived to liberate me – and chastise me for trespassing.

The sequence of the Luftwaffe bombing the docks was extraordinary, with the aerial photographs catching one stick of bombs splashing into the Thames, but also reminding me of the stick that went along our road in Barnes – and of the day when Elaine was turned out of the house, maybe six or seven years ago, when neighbours digging a hole for a tree about five feet from our kitchen found an unexploded bomb from that same stick.

Some of the best television I have seen in a very long time.

Wall-E  

Across to Leicester Square this evening to meet up with Elaine, Gaia and Hania and see Wall-E, the new Pixar/Disney robot-loves-robot film. Absolutely stunning and, while Elaine spent much of the film with her hands over her ears because of the volume of the Sensuround sound system, I was transported. Best of all, the grudging remobilisation of the human space maggots gave me a degree of hope that America might still reclaim its soul.

We had our first joint meeting of SustainAbility and Volans yesterday, in which Charmian (Love), our new Volans COO, expained the progress we have been making on our visual identity (very exciting), organisational structure (clarity can be a wonderful thing) and Advisory Board (some stunning developments there, too).  We are working on a range of changes in anticiaption of the Volans ‘soft’ launch early in September, follower by a ‘hard’ launch in November. 

One of Charmian’s slides noted that SustainAbility and Volans are ‘sister’ organisations.  True, but I almost commented that they are step-sisters: same father, different mothers — Julia Hailes with SustainAbility, Pamela Hartrigan with Volans.  But thought better of it. Still, I find myself increasingly thinking with real interest about how the two organisations can best work together in the coming years.

A wonderful week for cycling, with sun most mornings as I biked across to Holborn, starting the days either at Volans or SustainAbility.  The new office is really starting to come together now that the new desking is in, so people have migrated from the boardroom table in the front room to the large room, overlooking the gardens at the back.  And the place is starting to take on the salon-like feel Sam and I always had in mind, and which is so nicely captured in the book The Medici Effect, by Frans Johansson, which I read recently – and several other members of the team consider some sort of bible. 

An example was Wednesday, when Jodie (Thorpe) of SustainAbility came over with Kelly Michel, founder and executive director of Artemesia International (http://www.artemesiafoundation.org), to talk about their work with social entrepreneurs in Brazil, France and Senegal.  Part-way through the session, Pamela invited to rest of the Volans London team in and the Medicis came readily to mind.

Spent a good deal of time on the World Energy Council White Paper I have been drafting – but the highlight of the working week was a session yesterday with Rupert Bassett on the design of the new Volans visual identity, which we will launch in September.  Again, as the photos show, something of a team effort.

Have spent much of today, when not reading through the usual heap of newspapers or musing in the sun, in drafting new sections of the Volans website, also due to launch in early September.  The thing is really starting to come together. 

Red seated    Ale Hoovering – with one of our two Henry machines   Ale’s birthday cake – with match instead of candles   Cake 2   Design 1: Astrid and Rupert   Design 2: Rupert and Astrid   Design 3   Design 4: Astrid, Pamela, Charmian, Sam   Design 5: Smita, Rupert, Astrid, Charmian, Pamela, Sam   In a meeting at SustainAbility (taken by Sam)

‘A winged fish of extraordinary beauty’ is the translation of the sub-title above, which appears on a card from the Museo del Oro in Colombia, showing a stunning gold flying fish, which Tell (Münzing) and Ulrike brought with them when they came to lunch today.  He’s just come back from Latin America – and when he saw this flying fish there he thought of Volans.  They also brought a dazzling array of cheeses and two wonderful wines, both from Marta’s Vinyard (sic) in Mendoza, Argentina, one a 1999 Malbec, the other a 2003 Chardonnay.

A great way to end a two-week break, largely spent at home, though we did also spend a couple of days earlier this week at Hill House, Little Rissington, with a side trip across to see the Palmers in Icomb.   We have also been seeing a number of other people as and when, among them a favourite artist, Paul Slater and his wife Sophie, and, separately, Clare Kerr.

In the meantime, have been reading a fair amount, including Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect (which sums up what I’d like to achieve with Volans, in terms of the hybrid vigour that comes from the intersection of ideas, concepts and cultures), The Reserve by Russell Banks (which reminded me hugely of our long-dead cousin Hollister T. Sprague – first cousin to my grandmother Isabel – and his extraordinary house, Forestledge, overlooking Puget Sound) and The Balloon Factory, by Alexander Frater, the story of the men who built Britain’s first flying machines.  

Loved the story of Geoffrey de Havilland pacing out his prospective take-off path to check for larks’ nests before he opened his throttle and wobbled into the skies.  And the extraordinary saga of Sam Cody, who I only knew previously via his work with manned kites.  Had enormously enjoyed Frater’s Beyond the Blue Horizon some years ago, the story of his quest in search of the last traces of the old flying boats of Imperial Airways.

When I mentioned The Balloon Factory to Pat today, she recalled that her mother and my other full grandmother, Marjorie, had been on the south coast in 1909 and had seen Blériot’s plane.  Shortly afterwards, I came across the relevant section in Frater’s book: “On 25 July 1909, shortly after five o’clock in the morning, a tiny aircraft came heavily to earth near Dover Castle.  The pilot, weary and oil-smeared, gave his name as Blériot, Louis.  Britain’s aloof status had ended forever, at the War Office there was profound shock.  The role of the aeroplane in the defence of the realm might, after all, need to be reconsidered.”  Given the stout resistance put up by the bureaucrats of Whitehall to anything that smacked of the future, it’s astonishing we ever managed to get things together in time for WWI.  

Which cross-linked to something I was reading earlier in the week in one of my father’s mother’s diaries, from 1916.  She was working as a draughtswoman at the Admiralty, drawing up various secret things – and downloading her hectic social life into a series of Admiralty notebooks at the same time.  Isabel was my favourite grandparent, out of quite a few, thanks to a series of divorces on both sides of the family, and her style of confiding to her diaries gives an odd impression that she is speaking directly to tone, which is quite moving.  

In any event, at one point she describes a boyfriend who is in the Navy taking her out into nearby gardens to watch the Zeppelins flying overhead, at which point he makes love to her.  “What could you expect?” she asks. “Most unreasonable – time – place – everything.  But then when was love reasonable?” Later, less romantically, she notes that one of the airships had been brought down, but also that various bombed buildings had quickly been overrun by looters.  Which loops back in my mind to that golden flying fish – and the story it could tell of the looting of the Aztec and Inca cultures by the ancestors of the people who now run museums dedicated to celebrating the best (alongside guttering buckets of bad) that those earlier cultures left to posterity to pick over.