Search Results for: Tim elkington

For years – in fact since my coining of the Triple Bottom Line in 1994 – I have often said that I am happiest when things come in threes.

In large part that’s because I can remember three things, whereas four or five sometimes stretch the memory.

People have long played with the trio idea, notably including The Body Shop in Australia – which at one point used an image showing the rear ends of three cows.

But I really wasn’t thinking of a trio of hurricanes seeking landfall. According to the US National Hurricane Centre this is unparalleled. “Is this the new normal?” they wonder.

Flew to Amsterdam on 1 September with Elaine, and took our neighbour Faye Hahlo out to supper at De Bolhoed. After a beer at an open air bar by the canal. She is just starting her second year at the University of Amsterdam.

Over the following days, we visited a slew of museums, including NEMO, where we went up to the roof bar one evening to watch the sun set; the Hash, Marijuana & Hemp Museum (where I spotted a model of a hemp-canvas-covered Conestoga wagon, of the type that part of our family took the “Great American Desert” in the middle of the 19th century); the Tulip Museum; and The Hermitage, where we bought a crystal ball, to help me connect tomorrow’s dots.

But probably the highlight was the National Maritime Museum, with its replica of the East Indiaman Amsterdam and a stunning exhibition of navigational instruments and technology.

Spent a wonderful afternoon and evening with Thomas Rau, Sabine Oberhuber and their family, which began with my swarming up into their children’s tree house. And included dinner within the extraordinary fortifications of Naarden.

Then the work side switched in, with a keynote to the Fourth Annual Green Bond Roundtable, hosted by Rabobank. As I was preparing for this, I remembered going with Gaia to Amsterdam back in 1998 to speak at Rabobank’s centennial conference. The roundtable worked out very well, with extremely positive feedback afterwards.

Then, on Tuesday, Richard (Roberts) and I took the train across to Eindhoven to see Harry Verhaar of Philips Lighting. Thomas and Sabine had played a significant role in the company’s evolution of their ‘lighting as a service‘ business model.

Sardine-like packing of train for part of trip back, but then we got a seat. And there were moments, as when the customs people insisted in  unpacking and investigating the crystal ball, when I wished we had left it back at The Hermitage, but maybe it will crystallise a new era in our thinking about the future?

Orri Vigfússon said that he was “a new kind of environmentalist. I don’t take the moral high road.” Instead, as his obituary in The Times on 29 July noted, he described himself as a “green capitalist”.

When I wrote The Green Capitalists, published 30 years ago in 1987, I had to cast around for people who truly fitted the label. Vigfússon, who I sadly never met, did – and in a number of dimensions. A key element of his work was to buy up fishing rights from trawler owners and others whose activities were leading to the possible extinction of the Atlantic salmon, the “King of Fish.”

Useful background on his career can be found here – while reactions to the news of his death can be found here.

Continuing the theme of trips to different parts of southern England, we headed off to Dover and then Deal on Thursday, to see our Canadian friends Doug and Margot Miller. Doug founded GlobeScan in 1987, the same year we founded SustainAbility. Thirty years ago this year – and we have been fellow travellers pretty much ever since.

We walked along the beach from Deal to Walmer, visiting Walmer Castle, where I had to exit the castle to take an urgent call with Geoff (Lye). A high wind, with dust devils swirling across the gravelled drive alongside. Semi-apocalyptic feel.

Then the four of us walked back for dinner at Whits of Walmer, whose proprietors we knew from the days when they ran Whits in Kensington. Wonderful atmosphere and food in an old smugglers’ inn.

The next day, yesterday, Elaine and I went for the first time to see Dover Castle, expecting to stay a couple of hours – and staying five. Wonderful reconstruction of a royal court in the late 12th century in the Great Tower. Got there at opening time, so visitor numbers allowed a reflective exploration.

Later, we went down in the once-secret tunnels in which Operation Dynamo was planned, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. As we were waiting to go down into the tunnels, a lone Spitfire growled past. Talking to the guide afterwards, he mentioned meeting one man who had been 17 when he was part of the crew of one of the Little Ships. He came back an old man.

Hope to see Christopher Nolan’s new Dunkirk film, launched this week. That said, it apparently pretty much ignores Ramsay’s role, and many other things. But at least it does help counter the misconception that the RAF went AWOL during the evacuation.

Having gone to prep school at Glencot, near Wookey Hole, I have long been in love with Wells Cathedral – particularly the stairway up to the Chapter House. Wonderful winged sculptures in the Bishop’s Palace Gardens. But sadly a bit too early for the ripe mulberries I remember from a very long time ago.