Gin and tonic and I go back a long way. My first G and T, I’ll have you know, was taken on the balcony of the Serena Mountain Lodge in Kenya, at dusk, as a family of elephants took their evening libations. I was seventeen years old. Doesn’t that sound like a terribly sophisticated set-up? It really wasn’t. I’d just spent three days driving around Nairobi, all the while throwing up out of the car window or into my father’s terry towelling hat, from a combination of period pain and teenage angst, and was then offered an alcoholic beverage by my parents. My drinking experience at that point consisting of the occasional half-glass of wine at the family table or Brandy Alexanders at the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel (no one ever checked our IDs there), I ordered what everyone else was having. I drank my gin and tonic with the grownups and promptly fell asleep, thereby missing out on seeing all the baby rhinos and cavorting lions that visited the waterhole beside the hotel later that evening. But a love affair with a cocktail was nonetheless born that night.
As much as I love a gin and tonic I am surprisingly unfussy about how they are prepared. As long as it has gin and tonic water in it, I’ll drink it. (more…)
Life With Gusto 