watches2010

West Africa

I need a holiday. I especially need a holiday with my wife Claire. After my last Congo assignment -- where I had to sleep in a nunnery, or hugger-mugger with farting Pakistani peacekeepers on the frontlines -- I passed through London and bought so much lingerie that the credit card exploded. Claire's female friends were stunned when I showed them my purchases. One said she felt 'extremely insecure'. Luckily, I flew home to Kenya before the recent Atlantic terrorism plot was exposed. Had it been afterwards, the bomb squad would have destroyed my luggage at Heathrow. On arrival, Claire's reaction was as bemused as her friends. 'This is about you, not me, yes?' She's a Roman Catholic, she explained, but not Opus Dei.

At home on the farm in Laikipia we are still sleeping in a tent while the house is being built. It's freezing at night in the highlands. We go to bed with hot-water bottles, wearing socks. Our children are four and five years old, but they insist on piling in, too. I lie awake listening to the sounds of passion in the bush outside: lions killing zebras, pachyderms raiding the vegetable garden.

During the days we devise excuses for taking the Range Rover up on to the high plains. Up there we can replica breitling watches park and have a clear view for several miles across the savannah. You would be surprised how people pop up out of nowhere in Africa's remotest spots, and they all have bird-ofprey vision. I have to stand on the bonnet with my Zeiss binoculars to make sure nobody is spying on us. Last week, as we sailed on to the veldt, I thought we had successfully broken away from kids, herders and builders. My heart raced. Our privacy would be complete, except for the gaze of giraffe and oryx. Suddenly an enormously fat man in a white pick-up materialised, waving a brochure. He had come to sell me a hire-purchase tractor.

Normally, I hate hotels. I cannot stop thinking of all the people who have slept in the rooms before me, and how whatever happens -- murders, heart attacks, honeymoons -- the rooms always end up looking exactly the same by 11 a. m. On a trip to buy farm machinery in the Rift Valley, I made an exception and thought it would be romantic if we spent the night at a lodge by a lake stained pink with millions of flamingos. In the garden in front of our room I found a man dumping rubbish into a hole. 'That's not very nice, is it?' 'Oh, don't worry, ' he said. 'I only burn it when you are not around.' I am now spending the rest of the year travelling across the whole of Africa, making a series on the continent's history. It's back to scary long-haul flights to faraway places where, as one American hack once put it, supposedly civilised people are doing unspeakable things to each other. Hotel rooms with the TV on, playing the CNN news -- the signature of loneliness. I am tracking down a man who was once a president, but now lives in penury on the streets.

Hit the bar in the big hotels of Africa and you see white United Nations officials being tuned by hordes of tarts. Even if you don't believe me, I promise you, I may have been tempted in the old days, but no longer.

I can't even drink beer like I used to.

Fatherhood and life on the farm mean I nod off by nine and I wake before dawn.

I'm a hack in need of a holiday on a continent too dangerous or distressing to travel around with one's family. As I stare at the bare light bulb hanging above my bed, I realise I am earning so many air miles across Africa I could get us out to Dubai.

Byline: CHARLES SALE

THE urbane image portrayed on air by BBC's voice of golf Peter Alliss is not necessarily what you get out of the commentary booth. Alliss, 78, so admired by the Beeb that next year they are sure to offer him replica hublot watches a deal into links of london charms his eighties, had the following charming exchange with Sports Agenda at Turnberry yesterday. SA: 'Good morning, Peter.' Alliss: 'Oh, it's you. You're a pain in the a**e. F*** off.'

Byline: Simon Cable

WITH her fabulous figure and piercing blue eyes, she makeup brushes entranced one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Now Bar Refaeli is being paid to work that same magic on British shoppers.

The Israeli model, the girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, is appearing in an advertising campaign for Marks & Spencer.

She will star in their Valentine's Day advertisements wearing a red silk bra and pants and a pink spotted set.

Miss Refaeli, 23, is thought to be getting a six-figure sum for her services, but the lingerie she is selling comes at much more credit-crunchable prices of [pounds sterling]22 and [pounds sterling]11. A spokesman for M& S said: 'Bar Refaeli has the perfect qualities to show M& S's Valentine lingerie at its best.' She will also appear in a summer swimwear campaign, the spokesman replica hublot watches said.

Miss Refaeli has modelled for Victoria's Secret and Ralph Lauren. More recently she has been accompanying DiCaprio around the world as he promotes his film Revolutionary Road. The pair met in 2005 at a party in Las Vegas.