Journal

Just in from a super-rapid trip to Costa Rica, where I keynoted a conference celebrating the tenth anniversary of the sustainability initiative at the major regional bank BAC Credomatic. Literally dozens of invitations to come back – and very much minded to do so. Wonderful people, wonderful model of what the rest of Central and South America could do to raise their sustainability games.

Four flights were a welcome opportunity to catch up on reading: James Wolff’s Beside the Syrian Sea; Robert Olen Butler’s Perfume River; and Robin Robertson’s The Long Take.

All remarkable in their own ways and, now I think about it, all to do with the direct or indirect effects of war: The Long Take WWII, Perfume River the Vietnam War, and Beside the Syrian Sea the war that has raged for years in one of my favourite countries.

Am in Costa Rica, having keynoted a BAC Credomatic conference today, celebrating the 10th anniversary of their sustainability initiative. Meanwhile our work has been going live today in GreenBiz, my story about our visit last week to Growing Underground, and in Fast Company, the latest in our series of breakthrough blogs – this one on Carbon Productivity.

Rough-and-ready scoops of the BBC Breakfast Programme’s coverage this morning of the portrait being done of several of the precariously few surviving pilots from the Battle Britain.

Artist is Jeremy Houghton – and the main pilot featured in the 3.52 minute sequence is my father Tim Elkington. Part of a sequence that are being worked together, but I think this captures the man today wonderfully well.

As Tim says in the interview, this should be less about the pilots and more about the RAF. And, as it happens, I’m part-way through The Birth of the RAF, 1918 by Richard Overy, with Patrick Bishop’s Air Force Blue: The RAF in World War Two – Spearhead of Victory in my to-read stack.

Delightful visit to Leighton House Museum with Will Rosenzweig, followed by Design Museum and then back to Barnes for lunch at Sonny’s. In total, spent nine hours together – and it felt too short.

On Saturday, I ducked into Barnes Books and picked up a copy of Philip Kerr‘s latest Bernie Gunther novel, Greeks Bearing Gifts – having read his obituaries in recent days. Have bought in hardback, read and adored all 12 previous Gunther books.

Wondered whether 13 was indeed an unlucky number, though a silver lining in the gloom was the news that he had recently handed in a fourteenth Gunther novel.

More on Kerr here.