A Vapour That Appeareth
Black Mulberry Blue Colorado Spruce Cabbage Palm Cedar Deodar Chitalpa Copper Beach Cotoneaster Dawn Redwood Dogwood Eucryphia Evergreen Magnolia Fastigata Beech Fig Tree Flowering Cherry Flowering Crabapple Green Beech Handkerchief Tree Hawthorn Holm Oak Honey Locust Hornbeam Hybrid Elm Hybrid Lime Indian Rain Tree Italian Cypress Irish Yew Japanese Hackberry Japanese Red Cedar Judas Tree Laburnum Liquid Ambar Loquat Magnolia North American Indian Bean Tree Persian Ironwood Purple Maple Purple Sycamore Rowan Quince Red Leaved Prunus Sweet Chestnut Trachycarpus Palm Tibetan Cherry Tulip Tree Tupelo Variegated Sycamore Wellingtonia Redwood Wollemi Pine Yellow Buckeye.
Such is the arboretum that is the Bishop’s Palace Gardens of Chichester.
Day dancing to Constant Craving, Don’t Speak, Gloria, Music Box Dancer … in the voluted and cartouche’d and scrolled pedimented city that has a bar called The Ghost at the Feast and a street named Little London and a hotel called East Walls run by Jorge Kloppenburg and Anywhere Thompson. There’s a lot to unpick and unpack. “When there’s a challenge I say bring it on,” declares Anywhere, “and with faith you can do anything. We’ve expanded our chilli farm in Zimbabwe to 65 hectares. Here in Chichester we shop several times a week in the local farmers’ market. Everything is fresh and in season in our hotel. We only serve strawberries in July and August. We specially source Finger Post white wine and Vista Plata red wine for guests.”
Anywhere has three degrees. She seeks to be a role model for young women like her daughters, “I was working 40 to 60 hours a week and studying 40 hours a week. That’s how I achieved those degrees and I was running other things in the background. I want to be a voice and I will speak up no matter what it takes. My voice may not be heard today but it will resonate in time. Your colour does not and should not matter. What matters is in the inside.” She puts her beliefs into practice: the chilli farm provides employment for dozens of families and helps fund schooling.
Her foundation degree was in physiology. “We were introduced to a morgue where I had to dissect a body,” Anywhere explains. “It’s about studying how organs, tissues and cells work together to maintain health. Then I did a biomedical science degree for four years. You learn about so much such as oxidative stress and how it is involved in age related conditions. Portsmouth University where I studied was the first in the country to introduce biomedical science. It’s known all over the world and so they invited me to specialise in clinical pathology. I now practise this medical specialty which focuses on diagnosing, treating and preventing diseases through analysing bodily fluids, cells and tissues.”
Nothing is a chimera to Anywhere.
