Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Hardworking

Happy Easter from the Bahamas where I’m still working very hard. Not everyone who left the pandemic to take advantage of the Bahamas pro-business work environment is really all that focused on work—but I certainly am. I’ve made the determination about others based on the fact that they are having breakfast at 11—about the time I’m finishing up. 

Thanks to Instagram I’ve found out I have several more friends visiting here than I’d ever dreamed possible, and they are mad-posting and hashtagging.  All day long it’s ding-ding—#lyford #albanyyacht #catcayyacht #eleuthra… ding, #pandemic ding-ding.

In the interest of work, (and despite looking so tanned and rested), I’ve decided not to post until I have at least three new clients. Or maybe one really juicy new client.  My focus, since I now have time to focus, is going to be to search out only the clients whose sensibilities are most closely aligned with mine. 

All work and no play, that's productivity.

Daddy said if I made self-sufficiency my priority I’d find I’m aligned with a great many but I know he’s just being daddy. It’s easy for him to say… I think engineering focuses one’s thinking in such a way that you are really too science-minded to think about meaningful change. 

Earlier in the week I had a little hiccup… with such an influx of visitors and corresponding drain on the internet, I wasn’t getting my emails. Especially in the late afternoons when kids who should be swimming or in school are mad-gaming. The internet provider suggested I opt-out of using Wi-Fi and hard-wire my computer to the router— and which is so like a service provider to just make up some excuse as to why you can’t have what you clearly understood you were paying for. Plus it defeats the whole purpose of coming here to work. Luckily the yacht clubs are selling international hotspots so I can now work from wherever is most conducive to my productivity.

I had received a query from a global environmental movement that had “nearly” one hundred academics enrolled in fighting global warming. My first thought was how near to one hundred are you? Near enough to just recruit a couple more to make it an even hundred?  Which would have been my suggestion to them once we started working together. Further details explained that they “hoped” to rally worldwide support. Again…can you really not assert (with confidence) something so vague as “worldwide support”? They were going to need every bit of help they could get. 

I was however impressed with their aim to using “nonviolent civil disobedience” to achieve their goals. But on second thought, the word “aim” scared me. And after some research it seemed aim was indeed the right word, as they’d blockaded five bridges in London as a protest. Technically this qualified as non-violent but it had the makings of a wholly man-made disaster. 

Just now I was missing my rather bad-tempered client who’d made a killing in the cosmetic device industry, and whose presentation for the Audubon Society I’d painstakingly crafted just prior to being sacked.  

Nonviolence was definitely the way to go, but try telling that to Greenpeace who’d made a name by insinuating themselves between a Russian whaler and a whale just in time to witness and film the gruesome death of said whale and sell the footage to the news media. In years to come Greenpeace would continue to sell their goodness until they became a $336 million a year multinational behemoth. Some questioned the integrity of these donations when China’s abysmal environmental record dropped off of Greenpeace’s radar. 

As an avid environmentalist I have to care that we don’t look or act crazy, and in this way we can achieve greater results not to mention greater trust from the public. In the end what saved the whales from extinction was greed. With ever increasing demand for whale oil, man looked for alternatives and soon after creating petroleum, production from one petroleum well outpaced what a whaling expedition could garner in four years. This is of course all stuff I learned as a kid, but now as an adult I continue fighting both the evil destroyers of our planet and the movements that delegitimise those of us who are doing truly good work.  

I was feeling rather down that this briefly promising client had evaporated as quickly as they’d arrived so I rang my father in London to see if he had any ideas. He nudged me again toward the grub worm food factory he had suggested last week but even he knew I wasn’t having it.  And then he dropped the bomb saying, 

“Some of your friends had a good go of it on Thursday.” 

My friends?” I asked, not knowing what he was referring to. 

“Spraying fake oil on the Bank of England to win friends and influence enemies,” he said. 

Ah, environment nutters, he meant. “Friends” was his loving jibe. 

“Fake oil?” I asked.

“Pond scum if you must know. Pond scum and guar gum is what they used. Pity none of the news media seized on that…I thought Pond Scum Protestors had a nice ring to it.”  

What could I say? These were my people in a fashion, and they were dragging us all down.

“Listen…” he continued, I’ve got to run but let me send you the link, they sure need help.” He was nearly chortling before saying goodbye. 

It was both embarrassing and tragic. After pond-scumming the bank, they’d gone on to demand the Bank of England “make banks integrate climate risks."

Firstly I don’t think they meant to say "integrate risks" and second, asking banks to regulate themselves, is, I am sure, also not what they meant but something banks would be all too-willing to agree to do. 

Oh, and they were dressed like jesters. Actual jesters. If the visual was not bad enough, the historical association was that of fools, who existed to entertain the Crown.  

Ding-ding. Instagram calling.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Resetting

Paradise at last! I couldn’t take one more day in St John’s Wood as London goes into yet another lockdown and daddy grumbles about Boris. One day leading to another… and all of them leading nowhere.

But I am alive again in Lyford Cay, having arrived late last night—and mask free! I got up rather early today, put on lipstick and perfume, availed myself of a golf cart and got myself down to the club. I was so excited you’d have thought I was sneaking into Buckingham Palace. I wasn’t hungry in the least but wanted to feel part of a living breathing world. Surely my hosts here wouldn’t miss me — I’d  only just met them over Thanksgiving at Annabel’s anyway.

In minutes I was drawn into familiar noises… silverware, and ice being poured from a pitcher… oh it was just like the movies! Or every single day prior to coronavirus.

Now this is what I call green.

Lyford (the former Cay) was hopping! And nearly everyone dressed in white which could only mean they have an all-white rule for tennis or croquet or maybe everything. The substantially older women—the ones who delineated between jewellery and breakfast jewellery, were none of them in white, so it must indeed be a sporting requirement.

I looked around the room like a tourist might do. I felt as though I were looking through a window only because I hadn’t seen humans with coiffed hair or gold sandals or anything even remotely resembling civilisation for so long. I signalled the waiter for more tea, more berries, a paper if possible? Just more of everything because I wanted to bask in the glow of what was officially called… breakfast.

There were no papers but the waiter provided me with a card that allowed me to read several publications on my phone. “Even better!” I squealed. Lyford was green! Peering over my phone so that I could secretly scan the room, I settled on a conversation of a group of businessmen across th way…”the Great Reset”. Whatever could that be?

I googled on my phone to very little success… just links to a conference in Davos with futuristic looking businessmen talking intently. Was it staged? They were yellowish and pocket-sized. I googled and found it’s meant to be a global green push—post Covid. Things really were looking up. But I was very confused about seeing Prince Charles and Yo-Yo Ma in the promo and I was a little iffy on “a brighter, better and more sustainable future" from the ashes of Covid-19.

I texted daddy to ask him about the great reset and he texted back: “A lie.”

Really? A lie? I texted back, “What about financing sustainable recovery?

His response, “A lie.”

I started another text but before I could even finish he texted back -- 

“Also a lie." Followed by, “I can keep this up all day.”

As I made my way to the pool  I got another text from him: “And don’t bother your nice hosts about this unless you are prepared to return via commercial flight. Mummy and I miss you. Take pictures.”

What I know is there is no stopping him when he’s in one of these moods. I know deep down inside he is committed to our planet but no one is willing to do the heavy lifting. I got out my laptop and decided I’d write about this very important opportunity. This may be the biggest pro environmental initiative of my lifetime.

After sketching out my outline, I took a short swim and returned to my notes. Somehow my arguments weren’t so clear. I called father for help. “Hi, so…  I’m a bit wobbly on why the presentation features people like Meghan Markle instead of…”

“An economist with credibility?" he replied. "Because this is not an economic plan, it is just a lie, disguised as an economic plan, disguised as a way to save the planet. But it’s also about demilitarisation, and, independent media… oh and saving the arts. Shall we also throw in the whales?”

“Please just go with me for a minute… the great reset will ensure that every recovery stimulus from now on must include green conditions. To my mind this can’t be bad.”

“But specifically what?” He asked. Green stimulus money… to be spent on what? Tearing down infrastructure and rebuilding it to be more carbon neutral? Poof- our house in an adobe."

“But what about, you know, infrastructure… and trains?”

“You mean a tax! You want to tax everyone to build a train, even if everyone doesn’t ride on this train because it is better for the planet, yes?”

“Yes, but it is better.” I insisted.

“Perhaps but we are talking about things in places where they don’t exist -- take your new hometown. A train in Los Angeles would be prohibitively expensive, and would require a huge tax increase, so really we are talking about a tax.”

“Well, Tesla managed with private money.”

“Tesla sells carbon points, to other polluters, and makes a profit from it, so what have you achieved? It’s a shell game, darling. Listen, you know I’m all for environmentally ethical rules but that is not the role of business, the singular motivation of business is to make a profit, and profits make for better economies, better economies are better caretakers of the land-without exception.”

“And their promise of one hundred new carbon-neutral cities?” I continued.

“Find me the carbon-neutral city that you both want to live in and which respects the environment.”

The carbon-neutral city of the future!

He had me there. And I imagined my life with no luxury, no air travel, no country house, and sharing of all IP. This wasn’t going to work. I’m not giving up on the planet but I’m not giving up thousands of years of progress to these people whose main accomplishment, as far as I can tell… is to hold forums. Something to ponder tomorrow after my morning swim.