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Home Counties From Home

by | 27th, February 2006

‘LIFE isn’t all horses. No, it is not. Sarah Ferguson wanted to convey to her children that there is more to life than horses. So she took them on safari to see elephants.

Sarah and those Surrey lion cubs

As Sarah writes in Hello!, her daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, were awe-struck when they saw one mighty beast standing right by their car in the middle of the bush.

“Eugenie was moved so much she had tears running down her face,” writes Sarah. Indeed, she must have been deeply touched. It’s not every day a princess from the Home Counties sees a horse with massively deformed ears and a projectile nose, and so very wrinkled.

Understandably, Sarah was happy she’d enlarged her daughters’ scope on life. Good for her that she’d accepted an invitation so spend time on Sir Richard Branson’s private game reserve in South Africa, which she reached with the aid of a “luxurious flight” on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline.

With so much talk of Virgin, there is a danger that Sarah’s piece could start to look like a tawdry advertorial, one of those puff pieces written by hacks at the behest of their generous hosts.

But Sarah is above such things. She did this for her kids, not a free holiday. This was an enlightening experience.

She remembers the time she forgot to obey the rules and left the french windows on her lodge open. When she returned she saw that baboons had entered this deluxe African bolthole. The beasts raided the mini-bar and chucked things about a bit.

“I found my BlackBerry at the bottom of the whirlpool bath,” says she. “We began to realise that the bush is an awesome place.”

Indeed. What with french windows, whirlpool baths, spa treatments, Land Rovers and baboons, Africa really is incredible. It’s like Windsor, only more so…’



Posted: 27th, February 2006 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink