Search Results for: Tim elkington

Heythrop Park 1 Heythrop Park  2 Heythrop Park 3 Heythrop Park  4 Heythrop Park 5 Heythrop Park 6 Heythrop Park 7 Heythrop Park 8

Got up ferociously early to drive west, beyond Oxford, to Heythrop Park, near Entstone. Lovely morning, with early morning mist hanging over the landscape, right through to Entstone. Was speaking at an SAP conference on the theme of ‘sustainable utilities’. First time I have used Apple’s Keynote presentation software successfully, having had a hiccup at the National Grid a few days back, which forced me to rewrite that slide deck in short order in PowerPoint.

One of my messages was that the very fact that companies like Unilever (see previous entry) are committed to buying 100% of their ingredients from sustainable sources by 2020 spotlights a potentially huge market for software and related services to support the growing consumer and business-to-bussiness customer appetite for through-the-supply-chain traceability.

Had a lovely walk around the grounds, once I was sure the presentation would work, with a heron croaking wonderfully in the woods and the mist adding a sense of deep, Agatha-Christie-like mystery to the proceedings. Glorious to watch the red kites spiralling over the landscape as I drove to and from.

Before 1 Before 2 Michael Portillo in full flow Alan Sugar and Michael Portillo Mervyn Jones, Chairman of Aquamarine Power

Across to the Lancaster Hotel in heavy rain for the Director of the Year Awards, organised by the Institute of Directors. Found myself on a table right at the front with people from the Director magazine team, including Richard Cree. I had been one of the judges for the Director of the Year for Environmental Leadership Award.

Michael Portillo was an excellent chairman of the event, though I don’t always subscribe to his politics. He made a delightful comparison between the social dynamics of a meerkat group he had been involved in filming recently for a documentary (in which the dominant female chases other females out into the desert to die, and eats their pups, her system flooded with testosterone) and his time with Mrs Thatcher. I’m sure he’s told the tale before …

In any event, the short-list for the Environmental Leadership Award was: Mervyn Jones of Aquamarine Power, Duncan Goose of Global Ethics, Ian Jackson of Imerja, Nick Heaton of EnviroVent, Julian Dennis of Wessex Water and Pat McGarry of the Henderson Group. Was pleased when Aquamarine Power got the Award: they had come top of my list.

Aquamarine Power is a wave energy company, who I first came across during a cleantech tour of California. They have head offices in Edinburgh, Scotland and further operations in Orkney and Northern Ireland.  The company is developing its flagship technology, an innovative hydro-electric wave energy converter, known as Oyster.  Aquamarine Power’s goal is to develop commercial Oyster wave farms around the world.

The first demonstration-scale Oyster has been successfully deployed at sea at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland and was officially launched by Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond MP, MSP in November 2009 when it began producing power to the National Grid to power homes in Orkney and beyond. 

Oyster wave energy device

Caroline’s studio (detail)

Drove across to Little Rissington yesterday, the countryside looking absolutely ravishing in the autumnal sun, with blue skies and red kites and gliders soaring as I headed through the Chilterns gap. Listening to The Beatles’ Love album, with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ playing as I slip off the A40 and down what the girls call “The Rabbit Hole” towards Burford, beautifully lit by the slanting sun.

Passed a very recent crash in the notorious dip between Burford and Stow-on-the-Wold, pick up double cream at the Co-op at the old RAF station on the top of the hill, before descending into Little Rissington, the trees and landscape wonderfully illuminated. A big hole in the day: Sam (Lakha), who was meant to come, but had to cry off at the last moment because of back problems.

Late in the day, I filmed Pat and Tim with my Leica D-Lux 4, the first time I have used it in this way. The quality of the images and the sound is extraordinary. They both get into the spirit, remembering how they first met at Castle Gogar, outside Edinburgh, and recount the early days of their marriage, including Mill Cottage, where I was born. Apparently, the reason Tim went across to Gogar from the nearby RAF base, which he commanded at the time, was to negotiate the use of some prisoners of war to clear barbed wire from a nearby quarry, apparently.  

We cycled from barbed wire to cheese wire, with Caroline saying how as a child she and a neighbour, Brian Lane, had tried to work out how they could decapitate members of the local fox hunt with wire suspended across the road. Brian had a pet fox, which Tim had found in our garden – and Brian’s mother, Mary, had once stood in the gap between their house and the next armed with a broom, batting away fox-hounds that tried to get through to Brian’s pet.

Caroline was teaching Marina to paint, so I spent a little time up in her studio, where, as ever, I was taken by her collection of found objects. Wonderful meals – and I came away with a trio of freshly-picked corncobs, huge tomatoes from the greenhouse, and some of Caroline’s squash from her cache in the barn.

As I came out to drive home, a brilliant Moon was hanging over Bobble Hill – and both Mars and Venus were prominent in the star-studded sky. A very easy drive home, with the Moon a constant companion, and small mammals darting across the road in the headlights.

Speaking to Caroline this morning, she reported that Hill House had seemed very quiet when she awoke this morning. She thought Tim must be out in one of the gardens, but then realised that he must be further afield, because “he emanates” – and she couldn’t detect the emanations. Indeed he does. In fact he had been driven off to yet another Battle of Britain signing ceremony.

She and I also discussed our conversation yesterday about who we we would resurrect if he had godly powers. Talking it through with Pat too, we all concluded that top of the list would be Tim’s mother Isabel. She emanated, too. What an extraordinary woman she was – and how I wish I could have an hour or two to fill her in on everything that has happened since she died. One of the things I wish I had recorded on the Leica yesterday was the story of how she had watched him being shot down over Chichester Harbour through her second husband Carey’s Navy binoculars.

Elaine still in Canada, so am listening to music through headphones as I work away today, at the moment it’s The Velvet Underground and their extraordinary track, ‘Beginning to See the Light’, which is part of the loop we have been playing in the office this past week. And, in a way, I think I am.

Studio (detail, 2) Studio (detail, 3)

Shadowing: not my bike

I got to cycle quite a lot this week, though the day of the Tube strike was a little straining, with everyone and their pony out on the streets – or at least I did pass one female cyclist in Hyde Park who was wearing a horse riding helmet. The borisbikes are now everywhere – and I can’t help seeing them as a stroke of urban genius, though I suspect the bus drivers are finding it all a bit of a strain.

Made the mistake of crowing to Elaine that I would be able to ride into the office every day of the week, with Thursday slated for a filming session with me arriving on my bike, but then as I headed home on Friday my inner tube suffered a catastrophic puncture in Great Marlborough Street. I tried riding on the rim for a bit, but London roads are now so eaten up that I felt I would destroy the machine – so hailed a taxi, driven by a white-haired Irishman, who kindly drove me home.

Then, yesterday, as a result, I got to go to one of my favourite places, a nearby bike shop in Putney, Holdsworth’s, which has an interesting history. Back tyre is now triple-armoured with Kevlar, or so I’m told.

As I said to Sam (Lakha) in a text later in the day, one thing I like about such places is the sense of a “sincere belief in something, in this case the descendants of the velocipede. There’s a humbling purity about it. And it must have been the same watching your horse being re-shoed at the farrier’s. Different smell – horse, hay, leather, tobacco, urine, burning chitin – but the same complex, slightly dangerous pungency as when hanging around the blacksmith’s on the edge of town. For us as children in Ireland, it was the next-door farm, and in Nicosia it was the local brickworks.”

Sam and I agree we like workshops. As for my own workshop, I have been working this week on the building blocks for around 10 slide presentations, for conferences in Australia and Brazil, something that has taken an unconscionable time – but will no doubt stand me in good stead for later events once finished.

When Jim Salzman arrived from the States early this morning, he took a look at me and said I looked tired. True, I do. But am also suffering from an attack of eczema on my cheeks, which aggravates the effect – and often denotes too long spent hunched over a steaming laptop. But enjoyed a lovely sunset last night, as the world pondered the meaning of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. (See previous posting.)

Wildest moment of the week, though, was probably the moment when four of us were sitting in the office in Bloomsbury Place – and suddenly my age-old nightmare of a plane flying through the roof, or at least into the garden, seemed imminent as an aero engine seemed to go into screaming overdrive. Looked out the window – and saw the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight fly past, or at least the Lancaster and Spitfire. They had come in very low, apparently to mark the first day of the Blitz 70 years ago. Concentrated the mind wonderfully.

Sunset: 9/11

 

Elaine and Jim walking around the Leg of Mutton Reservoir Wasp nest Advertising moment A dying white poplar A distant police boat under Barnes Bridge

Took a leisurely walk around Barnes and the Leg of Mutton Reservoir with Jim Salzman, who flew in from the States this morning, ahead of my flight to Buenos Aires this evening. At one point, he noted a wasp’s nest dangling just over my head. Reminded me of the hornet’s nest I posted a picture of from Cape Cod when just starting this blog series, in 2003.

Otherwise have more or less finished the slide deck from which I will draw down presentations in the coming months – but it’s currently around 50 MB, which is slightly Gargantuan. Odd how foxes are becoming day-time creatures: saw one loitering in the street as we walked back.