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Mill Cottage: Returning To My Source

John Elkington · 23 June 2018 · Leave a Comment

*Aerial clues in my quest to find the hamlet where I worked out the answer to Shakespeare’s question about being or not being: Google Earth image of Padworth Mill and environs*

*Ditto downstream, with some sort of overspill*

*Inside the Mill: the old* *machinery, revamped*

*Looking down into the mill race, towards the mill stream and Mill Cottage*

Today was my 69th birthday, so we had decided to head back, after decades of meaning to do so, to the gravel bed where I was spawned. In retrospect, the environment had a huge impact on me, including informing the visual identity for the first iteration of this website (scroll down the link to see the explanation by Rupert Bassett and Lynne Elvins), early in the century.

*Original design by Rupert for my CounterCurrent logotype*

Every time I have written my place of birth on a passport or other document, it has always been Padworth – yet I had very little sense of the space, or so I thought, having left when I was around two years old, so probably in 1950 or 1951.

Two of the stories I had heard from my mother, Pat, were about kingfishers and blue underpants.

In the first, I would apparently sit enthralled when watching a family of kingfishers sitting on a branch overlooking the mill stream, at the back of Mill Cottage.

In the second, Pat looked out a window while shaking a duster, to see that I had overturned my pram, aged around eight months, and, wearing blue bottoms over my nappy, was heading into the reeds and, beyond, the water.

When, this morning, we found our way down Mill Lane, the unmade road to Padworth Mill, having previously and erroneously headed down Padworth Lane, it was unclear which of the three buildings in the tight-knit cluster, or hamlet perhaps, was the long-remembered Cottage.

When we first arrived at the security gates by the Mill, we had rung the ‘bell’, which rang and rang. Then a gruff male voice answered, saying that there was nothing to be done. Maybe a remote security guard?

Next a young woman, Tara, popped out of the Mill itself, accompanied by a Dalmation, one of a pair. Perhaps initially taking us for prospecting burglars, she was cautious, saying she didn’t know which of the buildings would have been the Cottage. Still, she suggested that we go around the corner to look at Mill House.

We made our way round to Mill House, shown in the photos above, which triggered a wave of memories in terms of the sounds and smells, the dragonflies and damselflies, and emergent vegetation in the mill leat, in front of the building.

Indeed, something seemed to break loose in my brain. It seems that I have conflated two memories over the years.

The first was of a small stream up behind the farm where we lived in the mid-1950s outside Limavady, in Northern Ireland. In memory, this had become something of a mini-Amazon, though I knew it can’t have been. Now, today, we had found my mini-Amazon, with the River Kennet flowing alongside the mill leat, the sluice and the mill stream. and the sound of water all around.

I remembered, too, the story of my father, Tim, shooting a pike with a bow and (presumably tethered) arrow from a bedroom window in the Cottage, which made me think that Mill House probably wasn’t the site of that ambush. The river was too far away, the leat too shallow.

My instinctive reaction, throughout, was that the other building, now called Island House, must have been Mill Cottage. (Something Tim has since confirmed.) Then, in Googling around after we got back, I came across this ‘Paradise Lost‘ story, featuring TV presenter Melinda Messenger of Channel 5.

Another story Pat told me today, in passing, was that one of our nannies at Mill cottage had formerly worked for Valerie Hobson, the actress who married John Profumo and ended up embroiled in the Christine Keeler affair. It’s amazing, if you squint, how tangled the web of history can become.

After I had swarmed across the footbridge that spans the foaming sluice, allowing you to look down on the electricity generating machinery and salmon race, we went back to the Mill. Tara reappeared with a slip of paper from an 82-year-old local mill historian, Tom Hine. I emailed Tom when we got back to London – and promptly got this reply:

Hello John, my goodness you’ve left it a long time since re-visiting after all these years! It’s a bit of a rough ride down to the mill, eh? Yes, I am a Berks Mill Historian – more than 150 mill sites in the county. Is there anything that you specifically want to know? The site pre dates ‘1066 & all that’. There was a corn mill recorded there in Saxon times. Many flour millers followed over the centuries. It is good that Wayne and wife are giving it a breath of new life after many years of decay. Kind Regards…………Tom Hine.

As I wrote down Tom’s name, and Tara explained what was still in the Mill, I asked whether we could possibly take a look? She and her husband welcomed us in – and it was really quite extraordinary. Wayne has boxed in much of the original workings with double glazing, so the mill race flows right through their home. See the picture, with attendant Dalmation. A truly spectacular bit of restoration under way.

After a bit more conversation, we took to the road, with the kindly Google Maps woman telling us where to go. The route was wonderful, through places like Pangbourne, Goring and Nettlebed.

At times our guide, speaking from my iPhone propped in a tray in the Volvo, seemed to be taking us the scenic route – but we arrived in Henley bang on time for a wonderful lunch with my brother’s former wife, Christina. (He was also born in Mill Cottage.) Christina has achieved wonders with her new home, over which clouds of kites wheeled and dove.

Afterwards, we all took a walk through town, alongside George Harrison’s Friar Park estate, which is just around the corner, and then down the hill into Henley proper. I loved George back in the day – and was horrified that his family life was so rudely disrupted when someone swarmed over the fence with murderous intent.

Oddly, when we got home both my long-time friend and colleague Geoff Lye and our daughter Hania had sent links to the Late Last Show’s Carpool Karaoke film in which (Sir) Paul McCartney returns to his own birthplace in Liverpool. Delightful – and a very similar spirit to our jaunt today, though sadly I didn’t get to play a concert in a pub.

Next time? Meanwhile, I can at at least listen again to Paul singing Birthday at the Grammys 2014 Tribute to The Beatles …

*Elaine’s photograph of Christina and I admiring the gates of Friar Park, George Harrison’s estate*

*Trees surrounding George Harrison’s estate, Friar Park*

*Delightfully tumbledown beehive outside the fire station*

*Ammunition box in an antiques shop – the bed on which I was born was propped up with them, I’m told*

*Old handle awaiting refurbishment at Christina’s new home*

*Ditto a leprechaun, wearing a long-sleeved version of my shirt, though in his case I’m told he’s awaiting collection by the original owners of the house*

NOTES

Gray and Juan, his youngest son, dropped in on Padworth Mill some six years ago. Here are a couple of his photos from then, the wooden bridge confirming the identification of Island House with the erstwhile Mill Cottage.

*Juan with Mercedes – and no security gate at the Mill*

While we were with Christina in Henley, she mentioned that the Elkington had lived in Henley soon after Padworth. Gray sent me a list of his guesstimates of places and timings:

I have tried to locate that garden with Google Earth and parental brains have been vigorously racked, but the whereabouts remain a mystery though are likely to be somewhere in the St Andrews Road area, being “uphill from the railway station.”

We were there for around six months, possibly September 1951 to March 1952, but certainly at the time George VI died (Feb 1952) because Mum remembers the concomitant brouhaha while living at Henley. Here FYI are the ten places we lived before Little Rissy (dates are my best estimates):

*Pat with Gray (left) and I (right), 1951*

About

**An impromptu response session for a Brazilian business magazine: they used the images** *(photo: Paulo Varella)*

Download my one-pager

Welcome.

This is the latest round of an experiment that began more or less with the new century. Indeed, this is now version 3.0 of a website that has routinely scrambled the personal and professional, a scrambling that has been the very essence of my life.

For details of my latest book, Green Swans: The Coming Boom In Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press, April 2020), please take a look here.

For the story in brief, my latest CV/bio can be found on the Volans website, here.

Background

Then there’s the slightly longer version.

Speaking at a 2degrees Network lunch event in April 2014, I had to introduce myself after folk from the House of Lords, business and the financial community had already spoken, citing long lists of roles and honours. I began by saying that, unlike them, I am still trying to work out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.

There was laughter around the table, but my point was semi-serious. My life has been very much a work-in-progress, with one unexpected turn in the trail leading to another. Which is why I suggested that one of the founding values for Volans should be “serendipity”.

And that process of creating one’s own luck has played through powerfully in relation to each of the roles I have played over the years.

I celebrated my 70th birthday in 2019, an event that started out as a birthday party and ended up as Green Swan Day, captured here on film. Yet I genuinely feel that the best decade—the decade where the movements of which I am part can have the greatest impact—lies ahead.

As to where it all began, the story began a long time ago. Part of the answer is Mill Cottage, Padworth, where I was born—surrounded by nature. But the first moment when I can recall awakening to the natural world was in a field on a dark moonless night in Northern Ireland in the 1950s, while walking home alone through an area of disused flax ponds, and finding myself surrounded by thousands of baby eels, or elvers.

I told this story in the New York Times in 2012.

Then came Cyprus in the late 1950s, with further wildlife encounters. But things really began to get serious in 1961, when I found myself raising money from the other boys at prep school, Glencot, for the fledgling World Wildlife Fund.

For many years, I couldn’t recall why that had happened—but then, much later, I would meet two of WWF’s founders, Max Nicholson (with whom I co-founded ENDS) and Sir Peter Scott who, among other things, was one of the judging panel that awarded me a Sir Winston Churchill travelling fellowship in 1981.

Max recalled that WWF had attracted front page coverage in one of the leading newspapers in 1961—and as soon as he said that I remembered going into the school library, reading what must have that very edition of the newspaper, and some sort of circuit was formed. (During 2011, I would take part in a number of celebrations of WWF’s 50th anniversary, in large part because of my role as a member of the WWF UK Council of Ambassadors.)

But something in me has always pushed toward the edge—and it was with the launch of groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace in the early 1970s that I felt properly part of a movement. Partly as a result, I was inspired in 1972 to go to UCL’s School of Environmental Studies (now the Bartlett School) as a stepping stone into the environmental mainstream.

As a result, I was already working with John Roberts in 1974 at TEST, in Covent Garden, when Lovelock’s New Scientist article appeared—and, as indicated by the fact that our first daughter would be named Gaia in 1977, that article had a profound impact.

Later in 1975, as luck would have it, I too started to write for New Scientist, producing a series of feature articles for the then Editor, Bernard Dixon. Initially, these looked at how ecological thinking was beginning to permeate government (in places as disparate as Egypt and the UK), but later I began to focus on companies, among them BP, British Gas and English China Clays.

In ENDS, a new beginning

And from that came Max Nicholson’s invitation in 1978 to join him and David Layton (of Incomes Data Services) in setting up Environmental Data Services (ENDS). The aim: to wake up the business world to the environmental agenda.

From that point on I had a much better sense of my life’s purpose and focus, but—once again—I had little idea as to just where the path would take me.

As described elsewhere on this site, the intervening years have seen my serve on over 70 boards and advisory boards, co-found four social businesses (all of which still exist in some form) and write or co-author 20 books and 50 published reports.

If you have ideas as to how this story might usefully go forward, my email address is either john@volans.com or john@johnelkington.com.

He Emanates

John Elkington · 26 September 2010 · Leave a Comment

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)

December 2006

John Elkington · 31 December 2006 · Leave a Comment

Sunday, December 31, 2006

DARK DAYS

Day after day on the book, with a little occasional light relief doing columns for e.g. Director magazine and – today – a wonderful email, in response to questions I asked him for the book, from Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, on issues around the triple bottom line and scaling. Huge temptation to post such gems immediately, but must try to keep at least some of the book’s powder dry!

Papers again full of the execution of Saddam Hussein. Dark times, though few people so richly deserved this end. Even so, a sense that those notionally in charge of the Iraqi invasion have little sense of how such things are likely to be seen in the round. Saddam, by contrast, seems to have been playing to a wider gallery for some time – even though some of his ploys, like comparing himself to my favourite Kurd, Salah el-Din, were laughable – given what Saddam did to the Kurds. And the complicity of the western powers in Saddam’s rise to power really ought to be the subject of a major inquiry.

Even as I write these words, however, I’m feeling happier than for ages, with the book trundling along well and so much time out. And even as I typed the first line of the paragraph above, Ruben Gozalez dead fingers, in the midst of playing Mandinga, segued into one of my favourite tunes of all time, La Curacha, which I first came across as a teenager in the film Flying Down to Rio. Late this afternoon, we took a walk around Barnes under lowering clouds, watching a pair of dogs swimming out into the Thames in chase of duck and gulls on the water, and then across the Common in wintry but wonderful rain.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

KEW GARDENING

Maggie (Brenneke), the Oregonian who joined SustainAbility earlier this year to help run our Skoll Program, came across to lunch today with her mother and aunt, and then we all drove across to Kew Gardens for a meander. The Gardens were wonderful and the weather weirdly balmy, with a clearish blue sky, and ice-skating rink in full tilt. The most astonishing array of flowers and flowering shrubs in bloom, in the open, which must be making someone nervous about what will happen with the first really hard frost.

EARTHQUAKES

With Hania staying up near Dumfries, we noted the Boxing Day 3.5 magnitude earthquake that hit the town yesterday with more than a little interest. Reminded me of the earthquake that hit Mossley the night before the funeral for Elaine’s father, shaking her awake.

INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY, WWII VERSION

This week, according to today’s Times, Britain will pay the last instalment of the US$4.3 billion loan given us in 1945 – and Canada will also receive the last payment on its parallel Can$1.25 billion loan. At the time, John Maynard Keynes had apparently warned that the war had left Britain facing a “financial Dunkirk,” which the loans helped us deal with. The whole Lend Lease agreement was an extraordinary form of intergenerational equity transfer, and – from my perspective, at least – more than worth the price in terms of helping rid the world of the Nazis. Thank you FDR.

Friday, December 22, 2006

FOGGED

The fog that replaced the wonderful blue skies of a while back really have hunkered in for the duration. As I cycled in to Holborn on a couple of mornings earlier in the week, my glasses frosted with moisture, the damp cold went deep. Several colleagues flying to Germany were severely disrupted by the huge wave of flight cancellations, among them Tell Muenzing, who came over to Barnes for tea yesterday, before we headed out to see old friends in Richmond. Otherwise have been tidying up loose ends from 2006, refreshing our connections with our far-flung Faculty with the help of Sam (Lakha) and working on a major revamp of the new book. Oddly, despite the fog, am feeling brighter than for a while – perhaps because of the prospect of the break, even though bulk of it will be book writing.

Richmond Park last weekend

Kensington Gardens as I cycled through earlier in the week

Rotten Row, ditto

Wellington Memorial statue of Achilles, which our old Knightsbridge office overlooked

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

VENUS

A whole slew of rock and pop obituaries appeared in today’s Times. One was of Denis Payton, of The Dave Clark Five, who I confess to having liked during the British Invasion of the US era of pop. But the one that really caught my eye was that of Mariska Veres, front-woman of the Dutch band Shocking Blue.

Venus was the only track of theirs I think I ever heard, but I still remember the shock of recognition and pleasure when we turned the Landrover into a gas station in Greece in 1970 and a big truck pulled in behind us. The driver opened his door just as the opening chords of Venus crashed out. Stunning – and if you want a taste, try searching for Shocking Blue on iTunes. The band sank pretty much without a trace after this one mega-hit, though Nirvana (the obituary notes) turned the song into a grunge anthem. News to me.

An odd thing was that during the same two-month journey around Greece, with a long sojourn on the island of Skiathos, we came across Geoff Lye (later a Director of SustainAbility from 1994) in the Pelepponese. He was with a group of folk in a London taxi – and it was only many years after he joined us in SustainAbility that we ultimately, serendipitously worked out that he was one of the folk in that taxi while Elaine and I were among the folk in the Landrover, our family wheels for many a year.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

COPSE HILL

Despite bright blue skies all day, I woke under a dark cloud, not at all helped by reading the newspaper accounts this morning of the Government’s spiking of the Serious Fraud Office investigation of bribery and corruption in defence industry contracts with the Saudis. Disgraceful. Growing sense that the House of Saud will collapse in wreckage and flames, and sooner than we might imagine, potentially dragging much of the western economy with it. If this scenario plays out, we will have no-one to blame but ourselves.

Then, early this afternoon, drove across to Christ Church, Copse Hill, West Wimbledon, with Jane Nelson, for memorial service for Ian Christie’s wife, Caroline. Darkly tragic, but with flashes of humour. Good to see people like Nick Robins, who has just produced a fascinating book on The East India Company, which he bills as the world’s first transational corporation (http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-7-29-904.jsp), and Michael Jacobs, now working with Gordon Brown. Brown’s idiotic decision on the Operating & Financial Review (OFR) makes him highly suspect in my eyes, but he does seem to be doing some interesting things behind the scenes on energy markets and carbon capture.

Friday, December 15, 2006

RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN ROULETTE?

Could never watch that scene in The Deer Stalker, where the Vietcong forced prisoners to play Russian Roulette. But at least it was Russian, with only one loaded chamber, whereas American Roulette (at least as one person today defined it) involves using a gun with only one empty chamber. Spent much of the day at the Royal College of Surgeons with faculty members of the University of Cambridge Business & Environment Programme (http://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk/bep), together with some of the world’s leading climate change experts. Came away believing that, as the same participant put it, we are increasingly playing the American version of roulette with our climate. A strong sense, too, that we are within a few years of being “beyond the tipping point.”

One subject was Venice, where the barrage to keep back a sea-level rise of some 12 cm is set to cost 20 billion euros, whereas some of experts are now talking about up to 50-metre sea-level rises as “domino dynamics” switch in. It’s not just an issue of a possible $1 trillion storm hitting the Gulf of Mexico in the near future but of Europe increasingly switching to a monsoon regime, the monsoons ending in India, the Great Barrier Reef dead in just a few decades as the oceans acidify, or “go sour,” a process that will itself slow the oceanic absorption of carbon, and the death of the Earth’s green lungs, in Amazonia.

One line that sticks in my mind is the gloomy conclusion that “the choice is now between taking a dangerous gamble with the planet – and taking a disastrous gamble.”

Then across to the office and on to a restaurant in north London with the SustainAbility London team, to celebrate the impending holidays and to mark Geoff Lye’s move to non-executive director status after well over a decade with us. Happily he will be spending a growing proportion of his time on climate change at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute (http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/), which should help us put our foot on the gas in this critical area.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

FROST/NIXON

Across to Café Fish for supper with Hania, including six oysters between us, then on to see Frost/Nixon at the Gielgud Theatre. Am not much of a theatre-goer, but it turned out to be a fascinating study of one of the most flawed politicians of modern times. Also an extraordinary insight into the entrepreneurial risks David Frost took in getting the four-part interview onto the world’s TV screens – the most-viewed news programme of all time, they say. Almost a disaster, though, as Nixon fended off the ravening Frost, until the latter managed to shuck the former, prizing him out of his post-presidential shell. Left you feeling almost sorry for Nixon. Michael Heseltine and party arrived shortly after us – and I found myself wondering what such a politician would have made of it all …

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

CREATIVE JUICES

A day when the creative juices ran energetically. Began by taking the Tube to Holborn and reading the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, particularly the Michael Porter article on the need to reinvent corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Clayton Christensen’s article on the need to apply radical innovation to social issues.

Shortly after I arrived in the office, Rupert Bassett – our designer – arrived and we had a wildly productive session with Ritu (Khanna) and Ivana (Gazibara) on our future-of-globalization project. Next a brief catch up with Julia Hailes on her new book, then back into another highly productive session with Maggie (Brenneke) and Sophia (Tickell) on our upcoming survey of social entrepreneurs.

Took Ivana and Jean-Philippe (JP) Renaut, both of whom joined us this year, to Galleria Charlick for lunch – where we were told that the Galleria team had seen my earlier blog reference to them. The menu may be limited, but the food is consistently excellent. And I love their ‘Power Juices,’ which mix the most unusual ingredients.

Then back to the office for further meetings and work on a proposal for a project I’m hoping to do with The Environment Foundation (http://www.environmentfoundation.net) next year, before going out to dinner with Lawrence Bloom (http://www.lawrencebloom.com/) – with whom I am facilitating a session on the future of cities at the World Economic Forum Davos summit in January.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

LITVINENKO

The newspapers are still full of the fall-out from the poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, the reality of which was brought home to me when – on my way to St James’s Palace earlier in the week – I walked past the front of the now-closed-for-decontamination restaurant where the story first surfaced. Here’s the photo I snapped in passing.

Itsu, sad and shocked

THE WEEK THAT WAS

A fair amount of through traffic in the London office this week, including Laura Pérez Arce from the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve (http://www.schwabfound.org/schwabentrepreneurs.htm?schwabid=325), already blogged on the SustainAbility website (http://www.sustainability.com/blogs/skoll/skollblog1.asp?id=914, 5 December entry), the Formula Zero team (ditto, http://www.sustainability.com/blogs/skoll/skollblog1.asp?id=914, 8 December entry) also at and Sara Olsen of SVT (http://www.svtconsulting.com/index.html), who focuses on social return on investing (SROI).

Then, yesterday, I took part in the latest meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (http://www.business-humanrights.org/Home). Amazing how far things have come along, with a fantastic group of interns from around the world – and we also approved designs for a revamp of the website, which should make it much more visually appealing and accessible.

Lunch arrives @ B&HRRC

Next, back hotfoot to Barnes to help Elaine with preparations for dinner with Doug (of GlobeScan) and Margot Miller, Steve (of Greenpeace Business) and Sandar Warshal, and Gaia, Hania and John. Wonderful evening which once again underscored how privileged we are to work in an area with such extraordinary friends involved.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

“RATHER A GOOD VINTAGE”

A glorious pale Moon hung over Victoria as I walked across Vauxhall Bridge for a breakfast meeting with Nike in John Islip Street. Mark (Lee) and I had expected breakfast, but instead we found ourselves dropped straight into an intense brainstorming session with around ten Nike people – fascinating discussion over an hour-and-a-half. Key issue is that Nike is dropping the supplier in Pakistan which originally got it into difficulties around child labour, because of endemic corruption, but is keen to work out how to help the local communities transition to new forms of employment. One possibility: various new business models based on – or linking out to – social enterprise.

Then back to Holborn, before shortly thereafter retracing at least some of my steps to St James’s Palace, for the launch event of Prince Charles’ new ‘Accounting for Sustainability’ initiative (http://www.accountingforsustainability.org.uk). Intense security as we threaded our way into the Palace, probably amplified by the fact that Tony Blair was speaking, too. Extraordinarily rich networking over lunch, before the session began, after which we all diligently trooped in to hear James Naughtie of the BBC’s Today programme chair a panel session on the new initiative.

Prince Charles noted that accounting is often seen as “an ancient and even mystical practice,” although much of it has evolved since WWII. In the same way that accountants had to embrace such issues as pension costs and foreign currency trading issues in the late twentieth century, HRH argued, so now they will have to embrace a growing range of social and environmental costs. To date, however, the art is ill-developed, so companies don’t ask themselves such questions as, “How many miles of polar ice cap have we helped melt this year?” No-one is accounting for these costs, HRH observed, though we will all end up paying for them – indeed, we are “running up the biggest credit card debt in history.”

Tony Blair congratulated HRH on being consistently “way ahead of your time” on environmental issues, and wryly noted that he had just left Question Time in the House of Commons in pursuit of a more kindly – and “better paid” – audience. He seemed moderately optimistic about the climate challenge, arguing that, “This is not an impossible thing to do.” But then optimism is the stock-in-trade of politicians. He, like other speakers, referred a number of times to the recent Stern Review on climate change, describing the issue as “the most serious threat that mankind faces.”

The Bishop of London noted that “we’re all afloat in the same planetary Ark,” stressing that those in First Class accomodation won’t long outlast those drowning in steerage. Lord John Browne of BP, meanwhile, warned that too much of today’s accounting is “backward looking,” with a growing need to develop forms of accounting and reporting that are forward-looking. We increasingly need a universal language to embrace triple bottom line impacts, he said.

Meanwhile, a giant portrait of Cardinal Richelieu loomed over the proceedings, and I wondered what a man who died in 1642 would have made of all this? Interesting to recall what a shot in the arm to the English economy Richelieu’s destruction of the power of the French Huguenots was, rather like Hitler forcing out the Jews who would later do so much to contribute to the Allied war effort.

Towards the end of the event, Prince Charles came back on stage and mentioned that he was the same age as Al Gore, who had just appeared by video link. Theirs had proved, he opined, a “rather good vintage,” which I am pleased to believe, since I am the same age. Overall, however, and whatever the outcome of the Accounting for Sustainability project, due to report in a year or so, I found the panel discussion disappointing – with too many senior people from business professing to be on top of the climate issue, when the reality is that no-one is. Indeed someone from one of our client companies told me over lunch that the more he reads about climate change, the more worried he becomes – not least because his home in The Netherlands is technically well below even today’s sea levels.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

SARA PARKIN, 60 + 40

After a blizzard of meetings, including a hugely energising lunch with Laura Pérez Arce of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, followed by a US teleconference on the knowledge and education requirements for successful social entrepreneurship, I travelled across to The Geffrye Museum (“of English Interiors from 1600 to the present day”) for a party to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Sara Parkin, plus her 40 years of campaigning to date. She was a leading light in the European Green Party movement and then a founder-director of Forum for the Future (http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk). Wonderful gathering of the tribes, with delicious food by Maria Clancey and Passion Organic.

Monday, December 04, 2006

TEST SITE

Up very early with Elaine and across to Tate Modern, with wonderful, balmy walk along the South Bank from Waterloo. Invited to breakfast by Unilever to see the latest Carsten Höller show, Test Site. The artist says his slides are sculptures you can travel inside – and asks what the effect would be if we all did more sliding as part of our daily lives? He suggests that sliding in this way is a means of experiencing “voluptuous panic.” Certainly it was less unpleasant than my normal experience of sliding, when my cycle loses traction on ice at speed.

We both commit our bodies to the depths, riding sacks that are reminiscent of those they use to send dead seamen overboard. You do indeed feel ‘transported,’ building up an extraordinary, juddering momentum as you come down, particularly from the fifth floor (a 58-metre ride). I felt quite set up for the rest of the day – which included a briefing session on an event I am due to do in Bangalore early next year, another on a survey we are planning as part of our Skoll Program, and then another Tubular journey across to Canary Wharf for a meeting of the ECGD Advisory Council. On the way, I espied the most extraordinary slip of a boat, that looked like something out of James Bond, or the as-yet-unmade film The Alien Seedpods Have Landed.

Test Site 1

Gaping maw

Elaine inserted

Swallowed

Another body blurs by

Millennium Bridge

Is it a boat, is it a …?

Sunday, December 03, 2006

INTO THE WEST WITH THE ACCIDENTAL ANGLER

Catching my breath after marathon bouts working on the book, I watched the Custer’s Last Stand episode of Steven Spielberg’s TV miniseries, Into the West (http://alt.tnt.tv/itw/), billed as a “Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.” More like a nightmare. The Little Bighorn massacre was portrayed as it is now thought to have happened, over in less time than it takes “a hungry man to eat his dinner,” or words to that effect. What a fool George Armstrong (should have been Headstrong) Custer was, though the battle-site, which we visited many years ago, is one of the most beautiful memorials I have seen, particularly the tiny Indian prayer-bundles hidden away in the brush.

The most grotesque part of the nightmare was the subsequent tearing away of Indian children to be carted off to a school that would reprogram them, forcing them to eat soap any time they used their own language, and making them choose new names: Hiram, Meredith, Walter … Felt huge synmpathy for the boy called ‘Voice That Carries,’ who had seen the Battle of the Little Bighorn from afar, and ironically gets stuck with the name George.

Then we watched the last program in a wonderful series, The Accidental Angler, in which Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who we have seen fish in some the world’s most exotic locations, returns to London to try to catch native brown trout in the Thames tributaries. However hard he tries, though, he fails, working his way progressively further into the west. In the end, he ventures as far west as Rickmansworth, near where I was born in a mill cottage alongside the Kennet (http://johnelkington.com/babelfish.htm). A sense of coming home – and then he finally catches his trout, just as the fishing season draws to a close.

He ends up in tears at the grotesque things he has seen dumped into the various tributaries, but there was one upbeat moment where he watched conservationists working to restore the upper reaches of the Wandle.

Friday, December 01, 2006

JOOLS AND LULU

Finally made it to the Jools Holland rhythm & blues concert at the Royal Albert Hall – and it was hugely worth the angst in getting there. Elaine, Gaia, Hania, John and I sat up in the Gods, or at least the Choir. Was blown away by the persussionist, Gilson Lavis. Unexpected ingredient in the mix was Lulu, whose bluesy style these days I find surprisingly engaging. And one of the encores was a favourite song, written in 1948, a year after Elaine was born, a year before I was – Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You Think, which runs something like this:

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as you wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think …

Sums things up, really.

Lulu prowls, Jools plays guitar

Jools takes a bow

ALCOA FOUNDATION

Back today from a couple of days in Brussels with the Aloca Foundation, which hosted a conference entitled Advancing Sustainability. More details at http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/news/news_detail.asp?pageID=20061201005300en&newsYear=2006.

My speech kicked off today’s session, and was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Meg McDonald (President, Alcoa Foundation), where I appeared alongside Magnus Johanesson (Secretary General, Iceland’s Ministry for the Environment), Tom Lovejoy (President, John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment), David O’Connor (Chief, Policy Integration and Analysis Branch, UN Division for Sustainable Development) and Leena Srivastava (Executive Director, The Energy and Resources Institute, India).

One performance indicator: within minutes of finishing, I had been invited to speak – by different people – in Australia, Brazil, Mexico and the US.

Sadly, though, I had to miss the afternoon session with Joseph Stiglitz, in order to get back to London for this evening’s Jools Holland concert. But, as events turned out, I should have stayed and heard him since the flight was delayed for over two hours. When we got back to Heathrow, a rain storm had just passed through, so the plane squatted on the runway for 25-30 minutes, after which the near-suicidal pilot came on the intercom to say they couldn’t pull into the jetty because some electronic beacon had failed. Because I was by now wildly late, and Terminal 4 isn’t currently served by the Underground, I jumped into a cab – and ran smack into lava-like gridlock. Eventually got to the Royal Albert Hall 15 minutes before the show started, borne along on a riptide of adrenaline.

Brussels panorame from my room

Brief encounter

CounterCurrent Archive

I am often asked what exactly it is that I do, whether at SustainAbility or elsewhere. Difficult. When filling in the ‘Please state profession’ line on passports and other forms I have long been tempted to write ‘Babelfish’, which I’ll explain in a moment.

But for 30 years the question I have been asked most often is what first switched me on to environmentalism and, later, sustainable development? Some answers can be found in my book A Year in the Greenhouse, in the Influences and Timelines sections of this website, and in an article I wrote some time ago for Jain Spirit magazine.

And the website? It’s a fairly natural outflow from work I have done under the guise of John Elkington Associates (JEA), founded by my wife Elaine and I in 1983.

The site in no way diminishes my commitment to SustainAbility, rather it provides a channel for material (some might say flotsam and jetsam) and meandering commentary that would not naturally find a home on the SustainAbility website (www.sustainability.com). Probably the most conspicuous example of that is my ‘blog’, which can be found on the Journal page.

Propellants In compiling this website, with the help of Rupert Bassett and Lynne Elvins, I was forced to plumb my core values, powerfully shaped by pressures and opportunities described elsewhere on the site.

Eight values that bubbled to the surface were:

– Evolution Real change happens over generations

– Sustainability Future generations as stakeholders today

– Diversity Evolution feeds on difference

– Transparency Sustainable economies are see-through

– Conversation Wellspring of insight

– Memory Capture lessons of experience*

– Intuition Facts only get you so far

– Serendipity Learn from mistakes and fortunate accidents.

These values also eddy through the visual aspects of the site, including the logo. Click here for Rupert’s explanation of how the imagery evolved.

And the Babelfish? Here’s the story. My work has often run counter-current, hence the imagery of fish swimming against the flow. At Volans Ventures and SustainAbility, too, we aim to drive the discussion of problems upstream – from symptoms to causes – in pursuit of real cures. But maybe the story runs deeper still. I was born in a mill-house cottage on an island in the Kennet, a tributary of the Thames. Later, as a child, I would find myself surrounded by elvers on a moonless night in Northern Ireland, or communing with wildlife along rivers in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset.

Looking back, you see links. My first major professional project involved fighting to protect part of the Nile Delta wetlands. That, in turn, led to my first article for New Scientist, in 1975. Several years of writing for New Scientist, while working with John Roberts at TEST, led directly to 1978’s invitation from Max Nicholson andDavid Layton to co-found Environmental Data Services (ENDS). And when I left ENDS in 1983, we leveraged my experience with business to launch JEA and then, in 1987, SustainAbility.
Post-1987, JEA served as a flag of convenience for a series of book projects. The website project, however, helped refloat the vessel. And once we had decided to use fish for our new logo, the imagery proved surprisingly apt.

Fish, it turns out, symbolise reproduction, life, freedom, the emotions, our unconscious, the quest for enlightenment, flashes of intuition, prophecy, fertility, plenty, prosperity, good luck, longevity and rebirth. Salmon, the ultimate homing fish and recently returned to the upper Thames, near our London home, symbolise wisdom – vital in a world flooded with data and information.

And that’s where the Babelfish fits in. Brainchild of the late, great sci-fi author Douglas Adams, it was billed as the universal translator. Slip the creature into your ear, we were told, and you could suddenly understand all the Galaxy’s languages. If any one organism symbolises my aspirations, and my work across the turbulent, blurring boundaries between business, financial markets, governments and civil society, this is it.

And, finally One {LOWER CASE O] ingredient that several people missed when I circulated a late draft of the website for comment was Elaine’s view on all of this, on – as Francesca van Dijk put it—’how you, and SustainAbility, have developed over the years’. So Elaine’s perspective is also available on this website. By the time the site launched in 2003, she and I had been together for 35 years and married for 30. Our ongoing conversation has been a crucial wellspring of much of my thinking. Her constant support, in all sorts of ways, has been key through all the ups and downs.

So my profound thanks to Elaine and to our daughters, Gaia and Hania, for their forbearance, support and advice.

John Elkington, March 2004; updated May 2008

* Given our work over the years on such issues as corporate reporting and assurance, some might expect to see some sort of verification statement here. What’s fact, what might be fiction? As a form of verification, we sent out drafts of the website for comment. Changes were made—and in some cases are noted. Interestingly, however, the science of memory suggests that memories are far from static. The process of remembering something can render the memory fluid, open to reinterpretation and embellishment (John McCrone, ‘Not-so total recall,’ New Scientist, 3 May 2003—and www.newscientist.com). So the invitation to comment is ongoing.

Flower power years: At Essex University in 1969 — **Flower power years:** At Essex University in 1969

Natural wonder: On Cape Cod with (dead) Horseshoe crab in 2003 — **Natural wonder:** On Cape Cod with (dead) Horseshoe crab in 2003