Journal

Here is a link to my New Year forecast published today by Ethical Corporation. The same issue includes my appreciation of outgoing Unilever CEO Paul Polman.

Lovely photos from Hania after she, Jake, Gene and Gaia trundled across to Hill House today to see Pat and Tim (now one week away from his 98th birthday), alongside my sisters Caroline and Tessa, and niece Lydia. Wonderful, despite various trials and tribulations along the way, to see the generations mixing it up in this way.

December has been such a frenzy that I haven’t managed any entries for a while, but am planning to catch up over the holidays. But was saddened to read of the death of James Erlichman in yesterday’s Guardian. Always liked him and admired his stances on major topics, among them antibiotic resistance and the BSE crisis. a lighthouse to steer by.

And I also recall a piece he did, I think for The Independent, on my role at the more commercial edge of environmentalism. It must have been in 1988 or 1989 – a big article, built around a large cartoon, either of a wolf wearing a sheepskin or vice versa. I genuinely can’t recall which way around it was. The cutting is probably in one of the boxes of cuttings in the summerhouse/garden shed.

But I have mightily appreciated the periodic challenges of such fair, honest and determined critics . While it’s comforting when one-time challengers, like the late Teddy Goldsmith, declare their growing grasp and support for a different line of attack, it’s more useful if lighthouses don ‘t drift over time. In my experience, James didn’t

We move out of 2 Bloomsbury Place on 20 December, after more than 10 years. Quite a milestone. But a fair amount of excitement about our impending move to Somerset House. A big draw for me, apart from the proximity to the Thames (which I wrote about in New Scientist in 1977), is the history of the place. A sense that Volans is finally beginning to emerge from its extended chrysalis phase.

Across to The Wilton Arms in Belgravia this evening for a 40th anniversary celebration drink with some of those who have worked for Environmental Data Services (ENDS) since we founded the cmpany in 1978.

Including myself, there were three (out of six over the decades) former Editors of the ENDS Report present. First double gin and tonic I have ordered in living memory.

Nice piece in the latest issue on the story so far, though if you read it without knowing the history you might conclude that Elaine (who found Marek Mayer through his partner, author Sue Gee, both Sue and Elaine involved with publishers Wildwood House on the floor below us at TEST in our Floral Street offices, now long-since demolished) had gone on to marry Marek.

Something of a surprise for Sue and I, were it true. Particularly since by the time Marek hove in view, Elaine and I had been together for well over a decade – having met in 1968.