South Africa
Rarely is Jonathan Clayton, the Times man in Africa, far from the front lines — but this month when I stayed at his Johannesburg house the battlefield came home.
My visits tend to cause distress to Christiane, Jonty’s German wife. Christiane hasn’t trusted me since I got her husband drunk at a Christmas Eve lunch in 1993, when he was my Nairobi Reuters bureau chief. I recall how, just before he downed his last bottle of champagne, he had revealed that all his German in-laws, together with his parents, were staying in Kenya for the holidays. En route home I had put him in a health club sauna, expecting the heat would sober him up. Instead he became dehydrated, passed out and remained unconscious through Holy Eve. His relatives were scandalised, and Christiane has naturally blamed me ever since.
This time I was in South Africa on business.
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