Topi­ary

I used to work at Hamp­ton Court. This is a mark­er draw­ing of some of the trees in the gardens there. I earnt a pittance, worked every single week­end for six months, and wore a terrible poly­es­ter uniform. I got very used to being surroun­ded by incred­ible splend­our though, and spent quite a lot of happy hours mind­ing the maze, sitting in a shed read­ing long Russi­an books, listen­ing to whatever mellow music wouldn’t annoy tour­ists (lots of Elli­ot Smith, Fleet­wood Mac, Tortoise and Grandaddy), and making up lies about the maze to tour­ists. (I wrote about being in charge of the maze in issue 22 of my zine). I also used to get a good amount of free glasses of Pimms too from jugs that were left over from the outside bar.

Fish­bourne Palace

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A while back I went to Fish­bourne Palace. In the 1960s engin­eers digging a new drain in a village just outside Chichester discovered some Roman mosa­ics. When they were excav­ated, they turned out to belong to the one of the largest Roman palaces outside Italy. My thing I wrote for Story­board this month is based on it (and yes, the build­ing really does look like a swim­ming pool). No one is one hundred percent sure who it belonged to, the most common guess is Tiberi­us Claudi­us Cogidub­nus, the local chief­tain /​ Roman ally /​ client king, but there are no inscrip­tions or histor­ic­al records either back­ing it up or prov­ing other­wise.

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