Journal

Flew to Germany on Monday, initially to Berlin for a session at the BMW Foundation Hebert Quandt HQ, featuring a beamed-in Jeremy Rifkin, then on by coach to the intriguing and once-royal village of Paretz. Spent several thought-provoking days with some 30 BMW Foundation and (the impact investment network) Toniic invitees – with some thoughts provoked captured in my latest GreenBiz column.

Here is a poem my sister Caroline composed recently, capturing elements of the adventures of looking after our elderly parents – he teetering on the edge of 98 in December, she 96. I can only say I love it. Its acute observation of two extraordinary beings and its patience and stamina in the face of life’s adversities.

The Year of Looking After Mum

In the half-light from the Anglepoise
she is a Limavady beach back in the fifties,
the pillow curving in sand-dune folds around her silver hair,
a beached and bleached mermaid – legs as useless.

This bedroom where you and he have slept and laughed and loved.
The wedding dresses twirled, the hair bedecked,
bridesmaids fluttering like cabbage whites over the brassica.
The mystery of the missing Doll’s House, solved.
The First Man on the Moon in shuddering black and white
on a grey plastic television, which creaked and pulsed with heat;
all six of us in your seven-acre bed.
The carpet, once fluffy vanilla clouds,
now matted and reeking like a damp Labrador.
The resident ghost appearing and disappearing here, in delusion and reality,
came to stay for good when the imaginary became your life.
Hallucinations so real you could reach through the shimmering portal
and pinch their warmly yielding flesh.
Your sightless eyes following apparitions in some other parallel bedroom
where all the abandoned little boys in the world had ample chocolate
and the floor was flooded to your ankles, a rippling High Spring Tide
that wasn’t there.
Where nothing was real except my father.
Now it’s full of fading light and holding on.
Every dent and scratch on ancient walls have history.
Every mark, careless graffiti, left behind in war and peace.
What matters is the minute.
Nothing else.

She says he loved her in an instant,
although she was wearing a stained apron, a dirty tea towel in her hand.
I think I love you, he said.
Don’t be silly, she replied.
But he was right.
The next day he came back with two new tea towels – post-war gold dust.
He had a girlfriend called Misty – she went back to America.
Mum was sad for her.

Caroline Elkington, Little Rissington, 2018

Grateful to Christian Sarkar for this interview in The Marketing Journal,  following our conversation on Monday.

Off and on, I have watched the BBC’s Dr Who, in its various guises, since it began in 1963. Every so often, a new Doctor hooks me back in. Admit that I didn’t have high hopes for Jodie Whittaker as the thirteenth time around the block in the Tardis, but was moved by this evening’s show, riffing off the Rosa Parks historical-turning-point-on-a-bus-in-Alabama story.

If this gets even a few people digging back into the history of the civil rights movement that will be helpful, but I suspect that it will have opened many eyes – and hopefully minds. Loved Vinette Robinson as Parks: quiet, determined dignity in a human and civic rights cesspit.

Liked the central idea that apparently small, inconsequential events can set change the world. Saw The Telegraph dissed it, while The Independent liked it: the old political resonances still at work. Found some interesting background on Parks’ personal history here.

Really enjoyed the session I did for Tech Mahindra at Pennyhill Park, where I discussed the overlaps between Artificial Intelligence and the Sustainable Development agenda.

Lots going on at the moment, including the complete revamp of the Volans website, where we are working with Twist Creative. Real progress also being made with our Tomorrow’s Capitalism Inquiry, with Aviva Investors, Covestro and Unilever all confirming their support this week.

Lots also going on in the realm of boards and advisory boards. Attended my last Board session for The Ecological Sequestration Trust and Resilience Brokers. Sad to leave, but after seven years I feel I have done as much as I can. And other opportunities keep coming up.

Slightly disappointed by the V&A’s ‘The Future Starts Here’ exhibition, which I dropped into after the meeting at Imperial College. But I did pick up a copy of Jaron Lanier’s stunning book, Dawn of the New Everything. Enjoying it immensely.