This Moment in Time 
The Phoenix Economy at The Value Web Early on Wednesday, across to the Oval for the start of a two-day event entitled ‘This Moment in Time’ – organised by The Value Web, who I have worked with on a number of occasions at World Economic Forum summits. They use a process developed by Gail and Matt Taylor of MG Taylor, founded in 1979. Had to leave half-way through the first day, but Sam and I went back for the concluding party on Thursday evening. Very struck to find my photo up on the white-wall, with the message ‘Still Here’. A number of the ideas I had surfaced the previous day had also made it onto the walls, including the notion that systems adapt (so the Vatican, for example, might anoint James Lovelock as Saint James of Gaia some time around 2029), that we might build God as a supercomputer with anyone able to input (prompted by a note with ’42’ on it in one of the break-out spaces) and, no surprise this, the Phoenix Economy. Very much liked Gail Taylor. Among other things, we discussed Hari Seldon, the psychohistorian in Asimov’s Foundation series, and worked to collapse a 30,000 years of civilizational collapse into just 1,000 years. Struck by the fact that the Canterbury Court business cenbtre, where the event was held, used to be a radar factory. At its best, what we are doing is evolving a new form of radar for our societies and economies. Came away hugely energised. 
Trends 
Elephant in the room 
Paradigm shifting 
Which Beatle are you? 
Scale 
St James 
Could we build God? 
Sam 
Wordle taken by Sam 
Gail and orange man 
Still here
Search Results for: Tim elkington
As time goes by
Sam’s shot of me at my desk 
Charmian and JP Renaut after the SustainAbility/Volans London session 
Charmian (Love) and I, with BlackBerries 
Water cannon at the Water Conference in Stockholm 
Dots of light on the wall as Sam and I confer at SustainAbility on Friday 19 August
Life is becoming a bit of a blur at the moment, mainly – I suspect – because my head is full of the various sections I am drafting for the new Volans website, due to launch early in September. One thing we did recently was to present the latest developments at Volans to the SustainAbility teams, in London and Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, Sam and I continue to hang out at SustainAbility for much of the time, because BT and others have been distinctly Stone Age in their wiring of the Volans offices in Bloomsbury Place. Phones and printers are now stacked on the floors, but a glitch means yet another delay. More positively, we have been building the Advisory Board at a rate of knots and now have some quite extraordinary people aboard, all to be announced in a couple of weeks.
This week kicked off with a flying visit to Stockholm, to speak on a panel at the Stockholm World Water Week event. This was to launch the ITT Watermark. Outside the conference centre, an extraordinary series of water cannon fired coloured columns into the air, though by the time I came out into the evening they seemed a little flacid and tired.
Apart from the endless typing away on the website content, I seem to be doing a fair number of telephone interviews at the moment. It seems that despite the gathering clouds of recession various media are still intersted in the corporate responsibility agenda – and where it might take us next.
Hill House Celebration
Back this morning from a celebration yesterday of the lives of Pat and Tim Elkington, our parents, and Olive Adamson, Pat’s sister-in-law. Fitful weather, but a gloriously memorable day with friends and cousins including Adamsons, Griffins and Millses. Plus friends ranging from Jean Lane opposite, through one-time local gallery owner Martin Riley, to Robin Niblett of Chatham House, his wife Trisha and their daughter Marina.
First time we have been to Hill House for a couple of years, thanks largely to the pandemic. Wonderful catering by local caters, The Traveling Kitchen. More guitars in the house than you would see at a typical Rolling Stones concert. Tim’s large greenhouse has been taken down behind the barn, leaving an aching absence.
Gaia drove us across in a rented car, first to Little Rissington for the party, then to Bledington where we stayed at the King’s Head to relieve pressure on Hill House and rest our weary heads, a roiling swirl of swifts overhead, then back to Little Rissington in the morning, and onward to London.
Two May 8th Anniversaries
Thinking of the “Golden Generation” today, as they called them this evening on the BBC, or the “Greatest Generation” as they are remembered in America. Those who got us through the Second World War, our parents among them.
Tim in the RAF from the Battle of Britain on, Pat in the ATS – where she would drive people like Orde Wingate and, later in the war, survivors from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, whose experiences she later confessed that she struggled to understand.
Watched The Queen this evening, talking about her experiences at the time, with her own ATS cap prominent on her desk.
May 8th may mark VE Day, but it was also when our parents – Pat Adamson and Tim Elkington – married in 1948. They both died last year, in their late nineties, but were very much in our minds today as we watched the 75th VE Day celebrations.
Delightfully, our own locked down street, Cambridge Road, like so many others, erupted in communal renditions of songs like It’s A Long Way To Tipperary and We’ll Meet Again. I was busy upstairs with one of the endless stream of podcasts and webinars I’m doing at the moment, mainly on the subject of the new book, Green Swans. But found the whole thing profoundly moving.
Today’s celebrations also brought to mind the string of bombs that went down our street in Barnes during the war, taking out the ceilings in our house and levelling several others, with an incendiary bomb accidentally discovered a few years back just the other side of the wall alongside our kitchen. Elaine was summoned out of our home by the police. Very small beer compared with what people suffered in the. Blitz, but memorable nonetheless.
And here, in celebration of their roles in the lives of the four of us (Caroline, Gray, Tessa and I), and of their extraordinary lives together, are three photographs that conjure those long-gone days of May 8th 1948 when hopes were high for ultimate recovery and a better world:
The Missing Wingwoman
As my youngest sister Tessa put it on Facebook: “These three all here even though between them they’ve had a small heart attack, a small stroke and an optic aneurysm in the last few weeks. True grit.”
She is the missing wing woman in the photo: a constant fixture at Battle of Britain of Britain functions in recent years, supporting Tim and jollying along the rest.
Mentioned by several people I spoke to: Nigel Rose, another of the Fewer and Fewer, who died on September 10. [His obituary appeared in The Times on 18 September.] Here is on YouTube on the moment he was hit in his Spitfire. Lovely cooing in the background. Symbolic of what they were trying to protect.
