Viva Brighton Issue #45 November 2016

BITS AND BOBS
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SPREAD THE WORD
Here we are, living dangerously, with Ines Calouri
at the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica. Considered,
volcanically speaking, to be in the first flush
of youth, it was inactive for hundreds of years until
1968, when it unexpectedly erupted, laying waste to
the small town of Tabacón. There have been no further
rumblings since December 2010, but still, it’s
not somewhere we’d want to linger.
And that’s us again, with Dave and Clare Hughes,
from Preston Park, and a cowboy, in Fort Worth.
They took VB 43 on a recent three-week tour from
Austin, Texas, via Route 66 through Oklahoma and
up to Kansas City, then on to Chicago. A real highlight,
for them,
was all the music.
From live country
at the Continental
Club, to
the Oklahoma
Jazz Hall of
Fame, and Ravi
Coltrane playing
a tribute at
Chicago’s Jazz
Showcase on
what would have
been his father
John’s 90th birthday.
Every road trip deserves a great soundtrack.
Don’t forget to take us on your trips, and send your
pics to hello@vivamagazines.com
ON THE BUSES #19
DAME ANITA RODDICK (Route 12)
In the mid-70s,
Anita and Gordon
Roddick were running
a health food
restaurant in Littlehampton.
They
had two young children.
Inexplicably,
Gordon thought it
would be a good time to try to fulfil his ambition
of riding a horse from Buenos Aires to New
York, which would take at least a year, maybe
two. Anita needed a way of earning money during
this time; she decided to open an ethicaland-natural
cosmetics shop, which she called
The Body Shop, on Kensington Gardens.
To take on such a project, and make it such a success,
one would have to be a ‘pathological optimist’.
One would have to somehow combine an
opinionated, free-thinking hippy mentality with
a strong work ethic and sound business brain,
plus enough charisma and PR-savviness to attract
loads of free publicity. And, luckily enough,
it appears she had all those qualities.
‘Roddick concocted the early products in her
kitchen, gave them exotic names, sold them in
recycled urine sample bottles (initially to save
money), and painted the interior of her shop
dark green to hide the damp patches and mould,’
notes the Dictionary of National Biography. As this
shoestringy venture grew to become a multinational
company worth hundreds of millions,
Roddick kept up her radical, opinionated-outsider
stance.
Her business style, she suggested in one interview,
involved ‘saying very simple things,
like why not? Why should I leave my values at
home? Why can’t I campaign for human rights?
I do that normally, so why the hell can’t I bring
it in to work?’
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
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