Search Results for: Tim elkington

Ginkgo cutting feeling a little hazy

Have always loved ginkgo trees–and cycle past several on my way through Grosvenor Square on my way to 2 Bloomsbury Place.  Sometimes take in leaves as they change through the seasons, but a few days back I took a twig–and we put it in a glass of water, with a touch of sugar, where it seemed to flourish.  Rather than having it develop a sweet tooth, I asked Sam to release the poor thing into the herbaceous border, in the hope that it might just strike root.  Her photo above suggests that it was feeling a bit woozy as it struggled to find its feet, but who knows?  A symbol, perhaps, of our constant struggle to make sense of this universe of ours–and of all the tides, current and eddies into which we find ourselves drawn.

Quantum eye

In an era where TV seems to be doing its very best to prove the old adage, X channels and nothing on, we have been resorting to watching DVDs: Quantum of Solace, where the addition of an ‘e’ turns a Green into a villain, In Bruges, which seemed to lose a bit of momentum, but then took off towards the end, and Shine a Light, Scorsese’s film of The Stones in concert, where the highlight–for me at least–was the duet between Jagger and Christina Aguilar.

Have also been reading Caroline Murphy’s Isabella de’ Medici–slow to build, but her father Cosimo comes across as strikingly modern and liberal in some ways, at least by the standards of the time, and she seems to have been quite a handful. In the spirit of spring-cleaning, have also been moving cart-loads of books into the rooms that our painter, Andy, has repainted. Makes me realise just how behind I have got in reading the books I buy.  

Otherwise, have been catching up with email, doing email interviews, catching up with old paperwork and beginning to think through upcoming presentations in Paris and New York.  The weather is typical Bank Holiday fare, overcast and too cool to sit out in the garden.  But the birds are wonderfully lively and various plants and shrubs are teetering on the edge of bursting into flower.

RAF Museum photo of Spitfire

The Times today tells the story of how eye injuries suffered by Battle of Britain pilots, when fragments of their Perspex canopies embedded themselves in their eyes proved surprisingly inert, gave Sir Harold Ridley the idea of implanting plastic lenses in replacement of cataract-clouded lenses.  As a recent beneficiary of this technology, I can only say another thank you to all those involved.

Elaine’s picture of a heron today

This evening, as I was cycling through Hyde Park, just by the Serpentine, a fellow cyclist asked to borrow my pump, because his back tyre was flat.  We talked while he pumped, then I got back on and was just beginning to pedal uphill when an enormous heron flapped gently right over my head and then headed north by north-west across the water, against the most radiantly romantic sunset. A truly magic moment, partly because of my long-standing belief in the heron as a personal talisman and partly because the giant heron is one of the animals thought to have inspired the myth of the phoenix.  

Reminded me of the time when I was standing still, on my own, in the garden beyond the barn at Little Rissington, watching flights of swifts and swallows overhead – and then a hawk, a hobby, powered by, clipping my ear-lobe with its wing-tip as it sped on the low part of a power climb towards its prey.

In any event, I took the heron as a sign that conversations we started today at Volans may be headed in the right direction.  And fortuitously, though I didn’t have my camera to hand at the time, Elaine captured another of the birds today on Barnes Pond.

I find myself in the company of what are described as “some of the world’s most influential environmental movers and shakers” in a new book, Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers, by Laura Mazur and Louella Miles, published by John Wiley & Sons.  Those featured include “thinkers” – those who have set the agenda, and “doers” – business people “who made the green cause their mission long before it became so prominent.”

The full list of people covered is as follows: 

Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface Inc, one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Heroes of the Environment’ 

James Cameron, founder of Executive Director and Vice-Chairman of Climate Change Capita (CCC) 

Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project 

John Elkington, founding partner and director of Volans, co-founder of SustainAbility, world authority of sustainable development, author of The Green Consumer Guide 

John Grant, author of The Green Marketing Manifesto, frequent conference speaker and prolific blogger 

Denis Hayes, President and CEO of The Bullitt Foundation, Chair of the International Earth Day Network 

Gary Hirshberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest producer of organic yogurt 

Tony Juniper, former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth (FoE), environmental campaigner, author and commentator 

Professor Sir David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford 

Amory B. Lovins, environmentalist, Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute 

Professor Wangari Maathai, environmental and political activist, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Ricardo Navarro, founder and director of the Salvadoran Centre for Appropriate Technology (CESTA), winner of the prestigious Goldman prize 

Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist, environmental activist and author 

Jeffrey Swartz , CEO of Timberland Worldwide 

Sir Crispin Tickell, diplomat, academic, environmentalist, author