Search Results for: Tim elkington

Have done a number of virtual events in Turkey this year, one rest of which was this profile in Oksijen. My thanks to Melis Alphan. Otherwise I continue to whizz around the world. Today, Earth Day 2021, started out in Japan, then back to London, then United Arab Emirates, then London, then US for the first time, and after coming back to London, off to California for a last call. A new order that would have been clinically impossible before COVID-19 gave virtual presence platforms a shot in the arm.

As part of an exchange with an American relation today, my brother Gray sent a photograph from when I was perhaps 6, or so. It shows my favourite grandmother, Isabel’s, second husband, Carey Coaker. He was a doctor. The place: Bilbao House, Dulverton, Somerset. Apparently, we were watching Gray being mounted on a horse, which explains everything.

When I looked up the house’s name today, I discovered that in 1739 a fire engine and sundry buckets were purchased and stored nearby. Which must have been why “Bellamy”, Carey’s gardener, also shown, was also a fireman.

I remember him wearing a huge brass fireman’s helmet at times – when the great (probably very small by today’s standards) fire engine came racing down the hill. I seem to remember that it was Bellamy’s job to ring the hand-rung bell on the impressive, urgent machine.

I also recall being chastised, beaten, by Carey for the breakages of various jars in his surgery, a crime almost certainly committed by Isabel’s two Siamese cats. But among many happy memories was one of being taken through the walled garden and out through a tiny wooden door at the back, into a green lane.

Later, Carey would run off with a wealthy patient, Phil I think, who we would meet much later – and very much liked. Bellamy would suffer what may have been a heart attack and slump face-down into his flower beds. But that was all in the future when this picture was taken.

I decided to cycle up to Hammersmith Bridge today, closed to all traffic for an eternity, it seems – to blow away some of the holiday cobwebs. Got there and back comfortably, with slushy rain starting to wink in as I got back to Barnes Pond. Then this evening I watched the Dr Who New Year’s Special, Revolution of the Daleks – which featured Daleks, of all places, on Hammersmith Bridge.

Other than that I have been plowing through books – currently immersed in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future. Very much linked to work I have been doing over the holidays – but more on that later. At times it reads slightly like a novelised version of an MBA course on sustainability, but am enjoying it immensely – and pondering how I can step up my game in 2021.

Have also watched Ken Burns’ 2012 miniseries, The Dust Bowl. Mentioned that to Paul Hawken today and he replied that we are pretty much there again.

This was some time ago, but nice to be reminded by Covestro of the conversations they hosted when dipping into today’s Twitter stream. Here’s the link. And a reminder, too, that I haven’t blogged here for a couple of months. The pace of life has been absolutely incredible.

Among other things, I have done over 100 virtual keynotes in 30+ countries since Green Swans came out. This week, for example, I did one for the Ministry of Defence (a 5-hour session on the climate emergency), then later the same day a session with 20 chief financial officers for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Then later in the week I did keynotes for e.g. the Daily Telegraph and Legal & General, the Institute for Family Business (IFB) and the Circular Economy Hotspot in Catalonia. All on top of normal work. Last weekend I suffered a 3-day migraine attack, which must be some sort of message.

Meanwhile, I have been working on my new book, now over two-thirds of the way through, with an eye to getting it out in 2022. Have been doing some stunning interviews along the way, including with leading surfers – for reasons that will become clear in the course of time.

I was thinking this morning of all the artists who have influenced by aesthetic sense over the decades – and Giorgos Varlamos came to mind. Born in 1922, he died in 2013. We visited his gallery in Athens during our 1970 Landrover trip to Greece – and bought a print of the image above, Hunters in the Woods. It’s still in the summerhouse.

A highlight of the visit was Giorgos taking us through his photograph albums, almost exclusively black-and-white images. An inspiration for my later albums, largely created in Tessa Fantoni’s albums, bought from her store in Clapham, though my father had kept albums for many decades prior.

I remember talking to Giorgos about how he had developed the image, which was printed from a woodcut, if I remember correctly. He said he had crunched up newspapers as a visual reference during the process, so that the cross-hatchings had an echo of newsprint – and therefore of meaning.

Not sure I approve of the subject matter these days, having sold my two shotguns some time before we went Greece-wards. Having once had some “pet” pheasants, which I had discovered nesting in a hedge at Moses Farm House, near Lurgashall, I had earnestly foresworn shooting pheasants. But then, some years later, shot one on Little Rissington airfield, in large part because she took me by surprise. Still feel a pang of regret.