Journal

Elaine and I cabbed across to Kew Gardens this morning to accompany Hania, Jake and Gene to the Children’s Garden, the Palm House, the Lily House, and the like. Was blown away by the design of the children’s area, where we were allowed to come in as grandparents – but would not otherwise have been able to experience.

Quite remarkably well designed and run. And amazing smells from the flowers and the gum trees. Very taken with The Singing Hollow, where you stick your whole head into a hole in a rock pillar and hum. A sense of what it must have been like for our ancestors inside the great cavities where they painted those early masterpieces of cave art.

A nearby sign said that there were humming hollows in Malta and in medieval cathedrals in the south of France. Amazing sensation, though Gene didn’t like it at all. One sensed, though, that he would have made his way back there before too long …

Fell into conversion with a woman who was originally from Tipperary and comes across to the play area from North London with her granddaughter every week. I’m not surprised.

Lovely sunshine, through a fair amount of cloud, and a sense of the summer shading into autumn and winter. But the grass and many of the trees are looking much revived after recent rain, though a fair few trees are still dead or in need of intensive care after the drought.

The last couple of months have also been busy on the home front because of the demolition of our old summerhouse, which was showing signs of age and had degenerated into being a pretty raggedy storehouse, and the construction and fitting out of our new garden studio.

One key reason for the project was that during some of the 250+ keynotes I did in 35+ countries in the first eighteen months after Green Swans was published it was sometimes possible to hear our neighbour’s children practising their flutes and trumpets through the party wall. During one important event I did in Finland, someone at the other end asked whether anyone else could hear distant flutes?

The project, undertaken by eDen Garden Rooms, has exceeded our hopes – and gave me an excuse to realise a long-held dream. I had wanted a wildlife pond rather than the tiny lawn we had allowed to ‘rewild’ in recent years.

Our daughter Gaia and her friend Adam from WoodeNZone, based near Shepperton and sourcing driftwood from New Zealand, have been the driving forces behind the project. We bought a glorious piece of driftwood from Adam, shaped like a great eagle or vulture, that will stand by the pond – and he gifted us another, which he referred to as an “embracing wing”.

Together they remind me of rather weathered and worm-eaten versions of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

We part-filled the pond with rainwater captured by our new green roof. And once the pond was in place, the rain fell and the first water boatman arrived in the course of just a few hours.

Much still to do in terms of bedding the whole thing in, including the planting of aquatic plants, hopefully embracing irises and bullrushes. But the shape of the thing is now fairly clear – and it is remarkably calming to sit on the new deck and watch the world, including our ancient apple tree, reflected in the surface of the water.

With the village pond a couple of blocks away, the Thames ditto, and the WWT London Wetland Centre at the other end of the village, I am very much hoping that we will have some wild visitors before long – though desirably not the herons, my second favourite birds after swifts, which roost in a heronry alongside the nearby Leg O’Mutton Reservoir.

Across this evening from Somerset House, with Elaine and in intense rain, to Hyde Park and the Serpentine Gallery. The invitation was to see the Serpentine’s ‘Back To Earth‘ exhibition, then to speak at Berenberg Bank’s first major event for clients for their wealth management services. Confess I liked the theme of the exhibition – ‘how can art respond to the climate emergency?’ – better than the execution.

Next, we progressed from the northern gallery to the southern, marvelling at a green woodpecker’s back luminous in the setting sun as it swooped up into one of a ride of great trees. Then, as we drank English champagne and moved into the Black Chapel, the rain returned with serious intent. In the darkness inside the chapel, cross-cut by spotlights playing on the panel, composed of Richard Brass of Berenberg, Baroness Bryony Worthington and Gabrielle Walker of Valence Solutions.

Richard did a wonderfully moving kick-off, referencing the Queen’s death earlier in the day, and then the panel proper began Andy all accounts, went very well. As the rain sluiced down outside, and also streamed through the Pantheon-like hole in the roof of the Black chapel, cross-cut by the arc lights, all sorts of interesting people – and of all ages – came up to talk. A day I think we will all remember for a very long time.

Either I’d do a book on it, or a few paras – so let’s try the second option. Left on Monday for São Paulo via British Airways to keynote the Sebrae Endear Summit. Sebrae supports micro and small-scale enterprises across the country – and sustainability is becoming a central theme for them, alongside ESG.

Greeted by people like their CEO Carlos Mellos and Bruno Quick, their technical director, but spent most time with Débora Targino Teixeira, Sebrae’s institutional and international affairs coordinator. Great fun – and made the whole process much easier.

Once again, blown away by the affection and support for what we do – and the images shown above are only a sample of the scores of selfies and group shots people insisted we take.

On the flights, I finished Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman, very-close-to-the-bone funny, and also began to read Bella Lack’s immensely engaging – and energising – book Children of the Anthropocene and, belatedly, Isabella Tree’s glorious Wilding.

The elephant in the airport poster provided an appropriate end note.

Ever since my Bryanston School days, I have loved hill forts like Hambledon and Hod Hill, where we would often repair back in the day, typically with a flagon or two of local cider. All of which built on a love of castles honed in places like Cyprus in the 1950s.

Happily, Dorset and its environs are rather well populated with hill forts – and today we (Julia Hailes, her husband Jamie Macdonald, Elaine and I) swarmed up one I had never swarmed up before, Eggardon Hill. A favourite of Julia’s. For a slightly more detailed account of the history, here’s Wikipedia‘s minimally more detailed version.